dummy

/ˈdʌmi/

dummy noun: a silent person; a person who does not talk.

Noun

dummy (plural dummies)

(dated) A silent person; a person who does not talk.
- The man's name […] was engraved in the centre, and beneath this, written in ink with the same elaborate precision as the engraving, there was a brief message.
  I am a deaf-mute, but I read the lips and understand what is said to me. Please do not shout.
  […] Singer looked very carefully at his lips...1940, Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Synonyms:

dumby
A stupid person.
- Don't be such a dummy!
Synonyms:

dumby, dumdum
(slang, African-American Vernacular, Baltimore) A term of address.
- Hey dummy, what's good wit chu?
Synonyms:

dude, bro
A figure of a person or animal used by a ventriloquist; a puppet.
Something constructed with the size and form of a human, to be used in place of a person.
- To understand the effects of the accident, we dropped a dummy from the rooftop.
- "There's a remedy, it does try one, but never mind," said Gubjor; "I shall make a dummy baby, which I shall bury in the churchyard, and then the dead will believe they have got the child, take my word, they won't know but what it is the real baby!"1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 304
Synonyms:

mannequin, marionette
A person who is the mere tool of another; a man of straw.
A deliberately nonfunctional device or tool used in place of a functional one.
- The hammer and drill in the display are dummies.
- The second method was to use two loadometers under the wheels of one axle, mounting the wheels of the other axle on what we called "equalizing blocks" or "dummies." By that method the two axles are brought into the same horizontal plane […]1950, National Bureau of Standards Miscellaneous Publication, page 138
(Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, UK) A pacifier; a plastic or rubber teat used to soothe or comfort a baby.
- The baby wants her dummy.
- Then on the fifth day, at the first sleep of the day, remove the dummy and follow my settling guide for your baby′s age. You should throw all her dummies in the bin to ensure you are not tempted to use them again – even outside sleep times.2006, Tizzie Hall, Save Our Sleep: A Parents′ Guide Towards Happy, Sleeping Babies from Birth to Two Years, MacMillan, published 2009, page 200
Synonyms:

binky, bink, bo-bo, comforter, dodie, nookie, paci, piece, pippy, soother
A player whose hand is shown and is to be played from by another player.
A word serving only to make a construction grammatical.
- The pronoun "it" in "It's a mystery why this happened" is a dummy.
An unused parameter or value.
- If flag1 is false, the other parameters are dummies.
A feigned pass or kick or play in order to deceive an opponent.

Show 3 more meaningsShow fewer meanings

(UK) A bodily gesture meant to fool an opposing player; a feint.
- Raul Meireles was the victim of the home side's hustling on this occasion giving the ball away to the impressive David Vaughan who slipped in Taylor-Fletcher. The striker sold Daniel Agger with the best dummy of the night before placing his shot past keeper Pepe Reina.2011 January 12, Saj Chowdhury, “Blackpool 2 - 1 Liverpool”, in BBC
Synonyms:

juke, deke
(attributive) A newborn animal that is indifferent to stimulus and does not voluntarily move.
- a dummy calf, lamb, or foal
A fairy chess piece that cannot move or capture, but can be captured and used to skip moving another piece.
- In Monochromatic chess moves are only allowed between cells of the same colour. Thus the kings are reduced to ferses, the rooks to dabbabariders, and the knights to dummies. […] The fers and camel can reach all the cells of one colour. The others are more restricted; the dummy cannot move at all...2010 August 21, G. P. Jelliss, “Simple Chess Variants”, in Mayhematics, pages 4, 9
- Everybody give the dummy a big round of applause.2018 October 12, aabicus, “My 7 Favorite Fairy Chess Pieces”, in The Daily SPUF

Verb

dummy (third-person singular simple present dummies, present participle dummying, simple past and past participle dummied)

To make a mock-up or prototype version of something, without all of the intended functionality.
- The carpenters dummied some props for the rehearsals.
To feint.
- The more glamorous qualities usually associated with him are skill and pace and he used those to race on to a ball across him and dummy a defender before having a right-foot shot saved.2011 February 1, Mandeep Sanghera, “Man Utd 3 - 1 Aston Villa”, in BBC
- For the first, the 30-year-old allowed Walcott space on the right to send in a pass that was expertly dummied by Samir Nasri, allowing Van Persie to swivel and smash right-footed past Robert Green.2011 January 15, Kevin Darling, “West Ham 0 - 3 Arsenal”, in BBC
Synonyms:

juke, deke

Adverb

dummy (comparative more dummy, superlative most dummy)

(US, slang) Extremely.
- It's dummy hot outside.

dummy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

dummy in Hindi

dummy, mannequin; effigy: पुतला putlā

dummy in Tamil

பாசாங்கு, பொம்மை, போலி

dummy in Malayalam

figure of a person or animal used by a ventriloquist: പാവ pāva

dummy in Kannada

ಕೃತಕ ಆಕೃತಿ, ತೋರಿಕೆಯ ವಸ್ತು, ನೆಪ ಮಾತ್ರದ ವ್ಯಕ್ತಿ, ನಿಪ್ಪಲ್ಲು, ಕೃತಕ ಮೊಲೆತೊಟ್ಟು, ಕಲ್ಪಿತ ಆಟಗಾರ

More languagesFewer languages

dummy in Punjabi: ਡਮੀ
dummy in Gujarati: ડમી, ડમી કરવા માટે
dummy in Assamese: পাতল patol
dummy in Nepali: डमी गर्न
dummy in Arabic: دُمْيَة dumya
dummy in Indonesian: pendiam, cetak coba, bonekaan, tinulat

Examples of dummy in a sentence

No Fairy baby has ever been seen to suck its thumb or to use a dummy.2008, Bern, Bern's Fairy Tales, page 15:
When your baby cries for her dummy, you can look her in the eye and say, ‘It′s gone,’ and really mean it.2011, Simone Cave, Caroline Fertleman, Baby to Toddler Month by Month, page 85:
The others are more restricted; the dummy cannot move at all, and the commuter can only move back and forth between two cells.2010 August 21, G. P. Jelliss, “Simple Chess Variants”, in Mayhematics, pages 4, 9:

All 40 example sentences with dummy

Synonyms of dummy

8 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of dummy

Forms of dummy

Noun
plural	dummies
alternative form (rare)	dumbie
alternative form (rare)	dumby
alternative form (rare)	dummie
Verb
third-person singular present	dummies
present participle	dummying
past participle	dummied
past	dummied
Adverb
comparative	more dummy
superlative	most dummy

Plural of dummy: dummies

Origin of dummy

From dumb + -y. Pacifier sense from dummy teat where dummy is in the sense of a nonfunctional replica.

Words formed from dummy

Phrases with dummy

9 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with dummy

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dummy

What does dummy mean?: Dummy means a silent person; a person who does not talk.
What is dummy in Hindi?: Dummy in Hindi is पुतला (putlā). See Dummy meaning in Hindi.
How do you use dummy in a sentence?: No Fairy baby has ever been seen to suck its thumb or to use a dummy.
What part of speech is dummy?: Dummy can be a noun, a verb or an adverb.
How do you pronounce dummy?: Dummy is pronounced /ˈdʌmi/.
What is the plural of dummy?: The plural of dummy is dummies.

Words near dummy in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: dummy (page history and authors); पुतला (Hindi) (page history and authors); dummy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dummy (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dummy (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dummy (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); পাতল (Assamese) (page history and authors); dummy (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: EN-AU ck1 dummy.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-dummy.wav.

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