Word.ws English Dictionary

Tweedle-dee

Tweedle-dee proper noun: a fictional little fat man who is the twin brother of Tweedle-dum and appears in multiple artistic works, including certain nursery rhymes and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.

Proper noun

Tweedle-dee

  1. A fictional little fat man who is the twin brother of Tweedle-dum and appears in multiple artistic works, including certain nursery rhymes and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.

Noun

Tweedle-dee (plural Tweedle-dees)

  1. One of a pair (the other of the pair being Tweedle-dum) of nominally different (often: but practically identical) things.
    • Some ſay, compar’d to Bononcini, / That Mynheer Handel’s but a Ninny; / Others aver, that he to Handel / Is ſcarcely fit to hold a Candle: / Strange all this Difference ſhould be, / ’Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!1773, “Epigram on the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini”, in Miscellaneous Poems, Manchester: J. Harrop, pp 343–44
    • How can we get the tweedle-dums and the tweedle-dees together for united action in the interests of the masses of the people?1907, The Medical world, volume 25, page 216

Forms of Tweedle-dee

pluralTweedle-dees

Origin of Tweedle-dee

The names "Tweedledum" and "Tweedledee" first appeared in print in one of John Byrom's epigrams, which satirised the disagreements between Handel and Bononcini. They were made popular by Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.

Questions about Tweedle-dee

What does Tweedle-dee mean?
Tweedle-dee means a fictional little fat man who is the twin brother of Tweedle-dum and appears in multiple artistic works, including certain nursery rhymes and Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.
What part of speech is Tweedle-dee?
Tweedle-dee can be a proper noun or a noun.

Words near Tweedle-dee in the dictionary

  1. Tweedies
  2. tweediest
  3. tweedily
  4. tweediness
  5. tweedle
  6. Tweedle-dee
  7. Tweedle-dees
  8. Tweedle-dum
  9. Tweedle-dums
  10. tweedled
  11. Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Tweedle-dee (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.

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