donut patrol
- noun
- /ˈdoʊnʌt pəˈtroʊl/
- Slang
:
patrulla de donuts
- The officers didn't mind being nicknamed the donut patrol during their overnight shift.
Examples
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After midnight, the security guards referred to themselves as the donut patrol to lighten the mood.
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He laughed when his friends called the neighborhood watch the donut patrol.
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The local donut patrol was out checking for speeders.
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I saw the donut patrol enjoying their coffee.
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The officers didn't mind being nicknamed the donut patrol during their overnight shift.
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He laughed when his friends called the neighborhood watch the donut patrol.
-
After midnight, the security guards referred to themselves as the donut patrol to lighten the mood.
Synonyms
230
2.7
A group of people like police who move through an area to keep it safe
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'donut' and 'patrol' give a clear literal image (a patrol associated with donuts), so a learner can infer it's a joking or non‑serious label for a patrol. However, the fuller meaning—that it mockingly refers to police or trivial oversight—depends on cultural/pragmatic inference (the police–donut stereotype) rather than simple compositional semantics, so it is not fully predictable.
Etymology
Donut patrol comes from a joke about 'police officers' who often stop for coffee and a donut on night shifts. So calling a group the donut patrol gives the funny image of a patrol that only watches small, unimportant things, and that is why it means 'a group in charge of something trivial' or a joking name for 'police on duty'.