Word.ws English Dictionary

Tweedle-dum

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

Proper noun

Tweedle-dum

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

Noun

Tweedle-dum (plural Tweedle-dums)

  1. One of a pair (the other of the pair being Tweedle-dee) 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-dum

pluralTweedle-dums

Origin of Tweedle-dum

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-dum

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

Words near Tweedle-dum in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Tweedle-dum (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-dum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tweedle-dum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.