dumdum
noun
dumdum is a noun meaning “A soft-nosed or hollow point bullet, or a lead bullet incised on the tip with a cross, which expands on impact to cause a greater than normal wound…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled D-U-M-D-U-M, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of dumdum is dumdums.
What does dumdum mean?
noun
- 1
A soft-nosed or hollow point bullet, or a lead bullet incised on the tip with a cross, which expands on impact to cause a greater than normal wound or impact site.
- 2
An ignorant person; an idiot.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce dumdum?
- US
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-dumdum.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of dumdum
- dumdums plural
- dum-dum
- dum dum
- dumb dumb
- dumb-dumb
- dumbdumb
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is dumdum?
Dumdum appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 111,684th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does dumdum come from?
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”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).