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The introduction is probably going to be a bit long winded, I hope it's not too much, but there's a TL;DR at the end.

As some of us might be vaguely aware, and as covered in previous questions (about existence of the sense, history, allowed usages, etc), Indian English currently still makes use of the word "doubt" in the sense of "question", or maybe "concern". In those prior questions, there are some doubts (heh) raised as to the recognition of that sense outside of IndE, and there's obviously no contemporary use in British or American English.

However, an obsolete sense 2 of the noun in the OED seems to be roughly analogous, see e.g. the 17th century usage example:

1693 Col. Rec. Pennsylv. I. 420 You doe Likewise alledge that the greatest bodie of Laws were transmitted‥by Mr. penn, which is a doubt. [OED1]

Another contemporary dictionary, the Century Dictionary, also has a similar sense 2, without indicating obsolescence: "A matter of uncertainty ; an undecided case or proposition ; a ground of hesitation."

Give me leave to tell you, It would seem a kind of affront to our country to make a doubt of what we pretend to be famous for.
    Cotton, in Walton's Angler, II. 224. [CENT]

but the Imperial Dictionary (1885) that it's based on only really has sense 4 as in "objection":

To every doubt your answer is the same.
    Blackmore. [IMP]

which in Century Dictionary is distinguished as sense 3, so doesn't seem to be the same, and so it seems like it's not a sense lexicographer of the time found essential to document.

Going back further, Johnson's Dictionary (1755) has "2. Question; point unsettled." but I'm not really familiar with 18th century dictionaries, so I'm not sure how to tell if there are any others covering the same sense and if the sense was actually commonly in use back then, or if it was already fairly rare and Johnson simply didn't bother saying so.

TL;DR: Earlier British and American dictionaries do seem to recognise the sense of "doubt" as in "question", but don't really make it clear when it fell out of use.

Given that it has apparently seen use in AmE and BrE, I'm interested in its history in those varieties, and if we can pin down the century at least, if not something more precise, as to when it fell out of use. For example, since the Century Dictionary didn't mark it obsolete, is it that it was used later in AmE than BrE? Was it really still in use in the late 19th century though? What about early in the 20th? For BrE, was there any use in the 18th century? (I don't have an OED3 subscription, so I don't know if it might have later examples. OED2 doesn't seem to.)

Obviously, if it fell out of use later, then it's more likely that the IndE use is simply a conservative form, like many such features in IndE, rather than a reintroduction of the sense, but that part is probably best covered at the other history question. There's probably other interesting questions about the later history of that sense in Am/BrE of course, and some of them might invite comparison. For example, is there any reason why it fell out of favour? In later usage, was it relatively formal? Any usage examples later than the 17th century or so would be great.

References

OED1: James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1897), "Doubt, sb. ¹". sense 2. in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary, First Edition), volume III (D–E), London: Clarendon Press, p. 616, column 2: "A matter or point involved in uncertainty; a doubtful question; a difficulty. Obs." — via archive.org

CENT: William Dwight Whitney and Benjamin Eli Smith, editors (1889–1891), "Doubt¹ (dout), n.". in The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, part IV (Deflect–Drool), New York: The Century Co., p. 1745, column 2. — via archive.org

IMP: John Ogilvie and Charles Annandale, editors (1885), "Doubt (dout), n.". in The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, vol II (Depasture–Kythe), London: Blackie & Son, p. 90, column 3. — via archive.org

Samuel Johnson (1755), "Doubt. n.s.". sense 2. in A Dictionary of the English Language. — via Johnson's Dictionary Online

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  • You've got some 18th century citations in your references: Johnson cites Arbuthnot from the 1730s and Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot in 1734, and your quote from Blackmore is 1712. So I assume you're looking later than that. Commented 2 days ago
  • I think Blackmore is for a different sense, but pretty much, yeah. Commented 2 days ago
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    Is it still in use but only in the plural? As in, "I have doubts about this" is a phrase I feel I've heard many times, despite only very rarely hearing it in the singular, "I have a doubt." Commented 2 days ago
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    @Lambie, I disagree: "I doubt you are telling the truth" means that I suspect that you're lying. I don't have a question, I have a belief. It's not at all the Indian English sense of "doubt". Commented 2 days ago
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    @Lambie Even used that way, I don't parse those two sentences as equivalent. To me the former implies that you're at least somewhat confident that the subject is unlikely to be true and the latter implies that you have some uncertainty whether the subject is true or not. Commented 2 days ago

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In my experience, the difference between the use of doubt as learned and used by Indians and other english-speakers is that for Indians, it's used in the absence/weakness of information, while others use it only when there's a sufficiency of information coupled with a lack of agreement.

In particular, your usage in the question

There are some doubts raised as to the recognition of that sense outside of IndE

is well-founded exactly because you refer to countervailing evidence.

Thus the various definitions apply just fine. It's the subtleties not captured by the dictionary that differ.

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  • I appreciate that this answer avoids loosely collapsing the Indian-English "doubt" into the generic sense of "question". Commented yesterday
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This answer is merely going to add certainty to a question of obsolescence.

The SOED (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) has as sense 3 what the OED1 shows as sense 2, and carries essentially the same definition. It is also a historical dictionary but it has the advantage of providing the exact periods of coming into and getting out of use for each one of the main meanings it records.

doubt † 3 A matter surrounded in uncertainty; a doubtful point. LME-L17

In this dictionary the code at the end of a definition is that of one or two periods of the English language; in the most usual form of this code, if there is just one period (3 characters, except for "OE", Old English)), then the usage came into being during that period and is still extent today; if this first period is followed by a hyphen and a second period (3 characters), then that second period indicates when the word became obsolete.

LME is "Late Middle English", a period running from 1350 to 1469. It corresponds fairly well with the first reference (1374 CHAUCER). L17 is "Late Seventeeth Century English", a period which runs from 1670 to 1699; this corresponds exactly to the last reference (1693 Col. Rec. Pennsylv. I. 420).

The (New) Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has been published in 1993, "is founded in the OED and shares many words from North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and elsewhere within the English-speaking world".

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    Yes; 'doubtful' and 'questionable' mean 'of uncertain truth / value / validity etc'. But the default meaning of 'question' in standard English is 'query; interrogative string', which muddies the waters here. Commented 2 days ago

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