dum-dum

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Related to dum-dum: Dum-dum bullet, Dum-Dum fever

dum-dum

(dŭm′dŭm′)

n. Slang

A stupid person; a dolt.

[Reduplication and alteration of dumb.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

dum-dum

or dum•dum

(ˈdʌmˌdʌm)
n., Slang.

a stupid person.

[appar. reduplication and resp. of dumb]

dum•dum

(ˈdʌmˌdʌm)

n.

a hollow-nosed or soft-nosed bullet that expands on impact, inflicting a severe wound.

[1895–1900; after Dum-Dum, suburb of Calcutta, India, where the bullets were made]

Translations

dum-dum

n (inf) → Doofie m (inf)

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

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References in classic literature ?

Many travelers have seen the drums of the great apes, and some have heard the sounds of their beating and the noise of the wild, weird revelry of these first lords of the jungle, but Tarzan, Lord Greystoke, is, doubtless, the only human being who ever joined in the fierce, mad, intoxicating revel of the Dum-Dum.

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"Tarzan comes to dance the Dum-Dum with his brothers.

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Deep in the jungle, buried far from sight of man, they came upon such another little natural arena as had witnessed the wild ceremony of the Dum-Dum in which the boy's father had taken part long years before.

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Tudor was notching his steel-jacketed bullets, or cutting them blunt, so that they would spread on striking--in short, he was making them into the vicious dum-dum prohibited in modern warfare.