alteration of Middle English dorring don daring to do, from dorring (noun from dorren to dare) + don to do. The phrase appeared as derrynge do in a 15th-cent. manuscript; the poet Edmund Spenser took this to mean ‘manhood, chivalry’, and used it in The Shephearde's Calendar (1579) and later in the Faerie Queen. Sir Walter Scott revived it in Ivanhoe (1820), using it to mean ‘desperate courage’