dumdum

From Dum Dum, a city in India where the type of bullet was developed, from Hindi दम दम (dam dam) (Bengali দমদম (domodom)), from Hindi दमदमा (damadmā, “tenaille, a raised mound or battery”).

• dum-dum
• dum dum

dumdum (plural dumdums)

1. A soft-nosed bullet that expands on impact to cause a gaping wound.
   • March 1920, Alice Ballantine Kirjassoff, “FORMOSA THE BEAUTIFUL”, in National Geographic Magazine‎, page 267:

     He related to us how the savages make bullets from the heart of a very hard wood cured by a special process. These bullets are only effectual when fired from a short range, and when they lodge in the flesh they explode like dumdum bullets.

     (He here refers to Tim Soan, a Taiwanese aboriginal person)

A reduplication of the adjective dumb, spelled in a "dumb" way (eye dialect).

dumdum (plural dumdums)

1. (childish or endearing) An ignorant person; an idiot.

• dum dum, dumb dumb, dumb-dumb, dumbdumb

From Proto-Austronesian *demdem.

dumdum

1. to remember

dumdum

1. to recollect, remember, think

dumdum

1. to think

Likely from an older *dumudumu, from Proto-North Halmahera, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *lumut. Compare Sahu ḏuḏumutu, Tobelo lulumiti.

• IPA^(key): /dum.ˈdum/

dumdum

1. moss

• Rika Hayami-Allen (2001) A descriptive study of the language of Ternate, the northern Moluccas, Indonesia, University of Pittsburgh