duds

/dʌdz/

duds is the plural of dud.

Noun

duds pl (plural only)

(UK, US, dated, informal, plural, plural-only) Clothing, especially for work or of rough appearance.
- I looked at what I could see of my rough blue duds, which I had plenty of opportunity of contrasting with the gay attire of the citizens we had come across; […]1890, William Morris, News from Nowhere, in the journal The Commonweal. (First published in book form 1890.)
- “I don't know how you and the ‘head,’ as you call him, will get on, but I do know that if you call my duds a ‘livery’ again there'll be trouble. […]”1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
(obsolete, plural, plural-only, slang) One's personal property.

dud (plural duds)

(informal) A device or machine that is useless because it does not work properly or has failed to work, such as a bomb, or explosive projectile.
- The only amusing highlight was Gudgeon having managed to exploit U.S. codebreaking efforts to ambush and destroy the submarine I-173, albeit not for the lack of the Mark 14's trying to sabotage the effort, as the torpedo that had hit the sub had refused to detonate; it seemed, however, that the...2021 December 29, Drachinifel, 21:03 from the start, in The USN Pacific Submarine Campaign - The Dark Year (Dec'41 - Dec'42), archived from the original on 19 Jul 2022
(informal) A failure of any kind.
- At the end of the day, the vast majority of primary schools are vibrant, friendly places and you may struggle to choose one because they all seem so great. Primary schools tend to have the feelgood factor. If you just aren't feeling it, this one's probably a dud.2014 September 23, A teacher, “Choosing a primary school: a teacher's guide for parents”, in The Guardian
1. (informal) A loser; an unlucky person.
2. (informal) A lottery ticket that does not give a payout.
(informal, obsolete) Clothes, now always used in plural form duds.

What does duds mean?: Duds means clothing, especially for work or of rough appearance.
What is duds the plural of?: Duds is the plural of dud.
What part of speech is duds?: Duds is a noun.
How do you pronounce duds?: Duds is pronounced /dʌdz/.

Adapted from Wiktionary: duds (page history and authors); dud (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-duds.wav.

Cite this entry: “duds.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/duds. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.