Word.ws English Dictionary

tum-tum

tum-tum noun: a dog cart; a rickshaw; a kind of vehicle.

Noun (1)

tum-tum (plural tum-tums)

  1. (India) A dog cart; a rickshaw; a kind of vehicle.
    • An optimistic old man was our driver; he needed all his optimism too, for his tum-tum was one of the most rickety I've seen , and his little pony very tiny. The balance of this vehicle was most important; we had to sit in certain definite positions ...1914, Alice Maud Pennell, Pennell of the Afghan Frontier: The Life of Theodore Leighton Pennell, M.D., B. SC., F.R.C.S. Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for Public Service in India, page 414
    • His fellow assistant, Dr Panna Lal, was in ecstasies at the prospect, and was urgent that they should attend it together in his new tum-tum.1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 49

Noun (2)

tum-tum (uncountable)

  1. A dish made in the West Indies by beating boiled plantain in a wooden mortar until it is soft.

Noun (3)

tum-tum (plural tum-tums)

  1. (childish, informal) Stomach.
    • Can't eat - my tum-tum's hurting.
    • Take a little food and stir in some GASTRIC JUICE, which is made fresh daily by the 35 million glands that line your tum-tum.2000, Joy Masoff, Oh, Yuck!: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty, Workman Publishing, published 2000, →ISBN, page 188
  2. (childish, informal) Abdomen.
    • The dog likes having its tum-tum rubbed.
    • The Internet is full of sites where you can buy everything you need to make a plaster mold of your tum-tum.2011, Joanne Kimes, Leslie Young, Pregnancy Sucks: What to Do When Your Miracle Makes You Miserable, Adams Media, →ISBN, page 172

Forms of tum-tum

pluraltum-tums
alternative formtum tum
alternative formtumtum

Origin of tum-tum

Uncertain. Perhaps onomatopoeia (of hooves or footfalls); compare tuk-tuk. Perhaps from tandem.

Borrowed fom Twi Akan tumtum (“mashed green bananas”). Compare Sranan Tongo tonton (“mashed plantain dumpling”).

Reduplication of tum, a shortened form of tummy.

Questions about tum-tum

What does tum-tum mean?
Tum-tum means a dog cart; a rickshaw; a kind of vehicle.
What part of speech is tum-tum?
Tum-tum is a noun.
What is the plural of tum-tum?
The plural of tum-tum is tum-tums.

Words near tum-tum in the dictionary

  1. tulwaur
  2. tulwaurs
  3. tum
  4. tum tum
  5. tum tums
  6. tum-tum
  7. tum-tums
  8. Tuma
  9. tumacoside
  10. tumah
  11. Tumakuru

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tum-tum (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-tum-tum.wav.

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