Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Dummy   /dˈəmi/   Listen
Dummy

noun
(pl. dummies)
1.
A person who does not talk.  Synonym: silent person.
2.
An ignorant or foolish person.  Synonyms: boob, booby, dope, dumbbell, pinhead.
3.
A figure representing the human form.
4.
A cartridge containing an explosive charge but no bullet.  Synonyms: blank, blank shell.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Dummy" Quotes from Famous Books



... Hyde Park company Cowperwood, because he never cared to put all his eggs in one basket, decided to secure a second lawyer and a second dummy president, although he proposed to keep De Soto Sippens as general practical adviser for all three or four companies. He was thinking this matter over when there appeared on the scene a very much younger man than the old General, one Kent Barrows McKibben, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... aeroplane. I went about the network of railways and paths under the trees that a modern battery requires, and came presently upon a great gun that even at the first glance seemed a little less carefully hidden than its fellows. Then I saw that it was a most ingenious dummy made of a tree and logs and so forth. It was in the emplacement of a real gun that had been located; it had its painted sandbags about it just the same, and it felt itself so entirely a part of the battery that whenever its companions fired t burnt a flash and kicked up a dust. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... actor was doing a little bit which called for him to shovel a supposedly lost and frozen person out of a snow bank. Of course a "dummy" was put under the snow, and the real person, (in this case Mr. Bunn,) acted up to the time of the snow burial. Then a clever substitution was made and the film was exposed again. This is often done to get ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope

... taught to simulate loading and firing; after a few lessons dummy cartridges may be used. Later, blank cartridges may ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department

... due in an hour! What are you around here—a man in authority, or just a dummy made up to look like one? Do you mean to tell me you're afraid to stake me to enough money to make El Paso and return? What, for the Lord's sake, do I look ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... watch one's step so when there are children about one. But I'm tired of being respectable. I'm tired of holding myself in. I warn the world that I'm about ready for anything, anything from horse-stealing to putting a dummy-lady in Whinstane Sandy's bed. I don't believe there's any wickedness that's beyond me. I'm a reckless and abandoned woman. And if that cold-blooded old Covenanter doesn't get home from Calgary pretty soon I'm going buckboard riding ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... officers and crew begins in thorough German fashion on land or in docks, in dummy or disused submarines, accompanied by much lecture work and drill. Submarine life is not so uncomfortable as we think. With the exception of the deprivation of his beer, which is not allowed in submarines, ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... heart seemed to miss a beat, for against the wan surface of the river he saw an arm raised and a gun point—presumably at the dummy he had left under the tent. Oddly enough his shock of horror was not primarily that one should seek to kill him, Stonor; he was first of all appalled at the outrage offered to the coat ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... was with no property daggers he was armed, nor dummy pistols loaded with Edouard Philippe's inoffensive powder. No! A revolver in each hand, he was bounding along, firing, as he said, ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... at it, and then grinned. He'd picked a monster's car, apparently—they'd done a neat job of duplicating, but they didn't need all the safeguards that humans used, and the switch had obviously been a dummy. ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey

... aptly said that "a gentleman's coat should not fit too well." There is great truth and subtlety in this observation. To be fitted too well is to look like a tailor's dummy. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... round from left to right she felt perfectly happy. Claude, however, was indignant, and, shaking Cadine, he asked her what she was doing in front of "that abomination, that corpse-like hussy picked up at the Morgue!" He flew into a temper with the "dummy's" cadaverous face and shoulders, that disfigurement of the beautiful, and remarked that artists painted nothing but that unreal type of woman nowadays. Cadine, however, remained unconvinced by his oratory, and considered the lady ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... subject was stopped by a voice saying, "May I come in?" It was only Cummings, who said, "Your maid opened the door, and asked me to excuse her showing me in, as she was wringing out some socks." I was delighted to see him, and suggested we should have a game of whist with a dummy, and by way of merriment said: "You can be the dummy." Cummings (I thought rather ill-naturedly) replied: "Funny as usual." He said he couldn't stop, he only called to leave me the Bicycle News, as he had done ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith

... overcoat on, and Mrs. Beswick gave herself the pleasure of buttoning it about his manly form, and of turning the doctor around as a Bowery shopkeeper does a sidewalk dummy, to try the effect, smoothing the coat ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... but we were afraid to speak. 'What is it?' he roared again, 'or I'll make your backs as hot as a roasted pig's!' And on this, Lawrence reg'larly blubbered out: 'The devil, sir; the devil is in the cabin playing at double dummy "put!"' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... Dummy guns and soldiers were placed in forts in a manner to deceive Americans as to the strength of the works, but the Americans were not to be bluffed so easily ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman

... at Annapolis, doubtless, is familiar with the dummy. Not so many, probably, are familiar with the doughface, which, at the time this is written, was a ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... engines, which have 25 horse power and are of the double cylinder pattern, are below the floor and connected directly to the wheels. The wheels are four in number and 31 in. in diameter. The internal appearance and general arrangement of machinery, etc., is about that of the ordinary steam dummy. It will run in either direction, and the exhaust steam is run through a series of mufflers which suppress the sound, condense the steam and return the water to the boiler, which occupies the center of the car. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... "A king nowadays is only a dummy put up to draw your fire off the real oppressors of society, and the fraction of his salary that he can spend as he likes is usually far too small for his risk, his trouble, and the condition of personal slavery to which he is reduced. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... made for, anyway?" queried Obed, when Clinton was out of hearing. "He looks for all the world like a tailor's dummy." ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... Dummy in Mathematics and a Lummux when it came to Spelling Down, but every Friday afternoon he was out in the lead, ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... orators were telling the farmers that under a gold standard no factory could run. The farmers could see the smoke of the tin mills which had built a great city just beyond their corn-fields. The silver men explained that smoke as "a dummy factory set up by Mark Hanna with Wall Street money to make a smoke and fool the people into thinking that it was a real factory and that industry was reviving under a Republican tariff." The orators said the best proof that it was a sham mill lay in the fact ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... only really honourable occupations for money were war and agriculture. The senator might own land and dispose of its produce or receive its rents, but he could not, for instance, be a money-lender or tax-farmer. Sometimes, no doubt, a senator evaded these provisions by employing a "dummy," but we must not probe too deep under the surface. In compensation for this disability it was from the senatorial class that were drawn all the governors of the important provinces, except Egypt, and all the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... essayed to speak—to give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his tongue were paralyzed. His right hand resting on the arm of his chair, as Crane ceased speaking, fell hopelessly by his side, where it dangled like the cloth limb of a dummy. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... ours? I thought so—idea grand and light—masses well broken—very fine chiaroscuro about the whole—an aristocratic wrinkle just above the hips—which I flatter myself no one but myself and my friend Mr. Cooke really do understand. The vapid smoothness of the door dummy, my lard, should be confined to the regions of the Strand. Mr. Elliot, where are you? Just be so good as to show his lardship that lovely new thing in drab and blue fonce. Ah! your lardship can't wait.—Now, my good woman, is this ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... middle fork of the American river and my friends. The river was sunk way down in the earth. It seemed almost a mile down to the water where they were to work. It was quite a large mining place. The excitement there every day was when the "dummy" went into the river. It was a diving armor that had been used in the gulf of Lower California to go down in the deep waters to hunt for pearls, and had been bought by a party of five, each putting in $800, making $4,000, expecting ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower

... is there in this tank?" the gruff voice of the Boss demanded. "You dummy—not two gallons! No, you finish what you're doing. I'll fill it myself. There isn't ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... accordingly repaired into a second apartment. There the officiating dignitaries assumed the vestments of Catholic priests. They produced a wax figure, designed to represent a missionary, amused themselves with a mock trial, inflicted imaginary tortures, and returned the dummy to a cupboard, after which they proceeded to the crucifixion of a living pig. The third act was an agonising experience for the doctor, being nothing less than the sacrifice of one of the brethren, the selection being determined by lot. The doctor, in his quality ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... tawk, tho' tha doesn't mean wrang, An tha says stuff aw darnt repeat; An tha grumels at hooam if we chonce to be thrang, When tha comes throo thi wark of a neet. An if th' childer are noisy, tha kicks up a shine, Tha mud want 'em as dummy as wax; An if they should want owt to laik wi' 'at's thine, They're ommost too ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... to anyone who looked at Mrs. Schomberg. Nobody had ever suspected her of having a mind. I mean even a little of it, I mean any at all. One was inclined to think of her as an It—an automaton, a very plain dummy, with an arrangement for bowing the head at times and smiling stupidly now and then. Davidson viewed her profile with a flattened nose, a hollow cheek, and one staring, unwinking, goggle eye. He asked himself: ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... house afforded but little shelter against the boisterous gales and the bitter cold of the rude climate of the Gulf. Its owner decided to tear it down, and in doing so he stumbled upon a startling discovery. He found a dummy window that, generations before, had evidently been built over and concealed. From the cavity thus disclosed he drew forth a large wooden medallion, about twenty inches across, with the portrait of ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock

... afternoon. The British soldier, old and new, is always happy when he is demolishing something; and a sergeant sent to prepare a pit for a forward gun had collected wood and corrugated iron for it by pulling to pieces a near-by dummy gun, placed specially to draw enemy fire. "Bad as some Pioneers I noticed yesterday," said the colonel tersely. "They shifted a couple of trees to a place where there had been no trees before and ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... near that," he said. "Pile the saddles, an' the blankets, an' the panniers around it, so it'll look like a real camp, Johnny. But it won't be a real camp. It'll be a dummy. See them thick spruce an' cedar over there? Build Joanne a shelter of boughs in there, an' take in some grub, an' blankets, an' the gold. See the point, ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... said," Aaron went on. His voice rose to a hoarse scream as he proceeded. "Did you think any one else would give forty-three thousand dollars for that dawg-house but me? Sammet ain't got nothing to do with it; he's only a dummy." ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... Then a dummy came and made signs of hammering nails in a coffin. The next day the seed potatoes were full of blood, and the child told his mother that he was ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... exclaimed, though indeed the glitter in his eyes knew nothing of friendship, "it is intolerable, this! Do you think that I do not see through these dummy waiters, these obsequious shopmen, these ladies who drop their eyes when I pass, these commissionaires, these would-be acquaintances? I tell you that they irritate me, this incompetent, futile crowd. You pit them against me! Bah! You ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is true that we are no longer face to face with the foe, but we—or rather, the authorities—make believe that we are. We wage mimic warfare in full marching order; we fire rifles and machine-guns upon improvised ranges; we perform hazardous feats with bombs and a dummy trench. More galling still, we are back in the region of squad-drill, physical exercises, and handling of arms—horrors of our childhood which we thought had been left safely interned ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... good plucky one," thought Sam grimly. "As for me, I play a pretty poor part in this affair, whichever way you look at it. A kind of dummy figure, it seems." ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... together in our living-room on the 9th of September, whiling away the time in a game of whist, and, as it was the final rubber and we were running very close together, we were quite absorbed in the play; although, of course, it was a dummy game. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... if he believed Bentivoglio to have been considered first. Therefore the visit to Bologna was to be a dead secret, performed by the principals almost unattended. Meantime Grifone (who loved mystification) prepared litters with a dummy Duke and Duchess to go under escort to Borgo San Donnino. He and his wagging escort duly entered that city: excuses to the Podesta secured him a covered passage to the palace. Once there, unfortunately, the populace clamoured for a view, insisted upon their Graces' appearance. Grifone ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... she squirmed like an eel, and her little bald head bobbed up and down faster than a di-dapper. Then I walked her, but I would as soon try to swing to a greased snake. She wriggled and bucked, and tied herself up into a bow knot, and yelled—. Oh! a Comanche papoose is a dummy to her. As if I had not hands full, arms full, and ears full, Dick must needs wake up and pitch head foremost out of the cradle, and turn a double summerset before he landed upside down on the floor, whereupon he lifted up his voice, and the concert grew lively. I took ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... take serious things as trifles, and trifles as serious things. Learn it, my boy, or you'll embitter existence. You are not going to alter the conditions of civilization by any change in your own particular life; so just look out the prettiest, wittiest, wealthiest little woman who is a dummy for the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... think you'd do it, ma'am," he said finally, a little hoarsely. "But I reckon you know your own business best." He smiled slightly. "I don't think there's any use of you an' me meetin' again—I don't want to be goin' on, bein' a dummy man that you c'n watch. But I'm glad to have amused you some an' I have enjoyed myself, talkin' to you. But I reckon you've done what you wanted to do, an' so I'll ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... good article on a way to make our army look more impressive to the foe, namely by fitting each man with a dummy man on either side of him. Bosch aeroplane observers would imagine then that we were three times as strong as we are, and some very desirable ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... slight a mother-in-law like that, an' maybe ring a dummy at her; but that's thess where I differ. I don't forget where I get my benefits, an' ef it hadn't 'a' been for her, the family circle o' Deuteronomy Jones would be quite diff'rent to what it is. She's handed down some of Sonny's best traits to ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... service; she gave the best she had. Then send the children to Miss Phillips'. Of course, you must write to Thornton. Tell him as much or as little as you choose. He's rightfully in the game. We're all three playing with a dummy." How Doris blessed Martin for that "we three!" He had come into the game and, once in, Martin could ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... between Play in Auction and Bridge. Playing for Game. Play for an Even Break. General Play of the Declarer. Declarer's Play of No-trump. Declarer's Play of a Suit Declaration. Play by Declarer's Adversaries. The Signal. The Discard. Blocking the Dummy. Avoid opening New Suits. How to return Partner's Bid. The Finesse. Table showing when Third Hand ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... practice that day. The coach was merciless. They flung themselves against the dummy tackle until they were bruised and sore. They ran down the field under punts until their breath came in gasps. They practiced the forward pass until they were dizzy and seemed to see ten balls flying over the field instead of one. But no one complained or shirked, although every separate bone ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... Brokerage Company. It was a legitimate firm, doing a good business. We had no reason to suspect it, even though we checked out all firms both above and below us. Well, in checking on the houseboaters, we discovered that the firm had recently been taken over by a dummy corporation, and most of it was actually owned by the man Rick called 'striped shirt.' He bought the stock right after the project moved in ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... disguises really that we required—the long gray dust cloaks and soft hats and all the rest, so much alike that we might have been soldiers in the same regiment. Philpotts and Victorine, my sister's maid, were also made up on a similar pattern, and a second baby was built up as a dummy that would ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... invited you to mistake it for a harmless studio—was merely a sheath, so to speak. Within, a corridor divided it from the true wall of the room: and this room had no window or top-light, though a handsome one in the roof—a dummy—beguiled the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... so that from the street you could see through one the shapely legs of Mr. Endymion Westcote at his knee-hole table, and through another the legs of Mr. Narcissus. The third and midmost window was a dummy, having been bricked up to avoid the window-tax imposed by Mr. Pitt—in whose statesmanship, however, the brothers had firmly believed. Their somewhat fantastic names were traditional in the Westcote pedigree and dated from, the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... explained that he had prepared his model there instead of at home, in order to console himself a little for his big dummy of an angel, the prescribed triteness of which disgusted him. Some fresh objections had been raised with respect to the folds of the robe, which gave some prominence to the thighs, and in the end he had been compelled to modify all ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... check for $240, and had it in his hatband with the $240,000 dummy check. The plan is palpable enough. When the messenger brought the bonds Brea, or Newman, was going to say: "All right, I have the check here; bring the bonds and we will go to the Chemical Bank and get them to certify my check." Then ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... red-head when I spoke with patriotic fervour of the wrongs which La France was doing mon ami et moi—only dimly do I remember, to my right, the immobility of The Wooden Hand, reminding one of a clothing dummy, or a life-size doll which might be made to move only by him who knew the proper combination.... At the outset I was asked: Did I want a translator? I looked and saw the secretaire, weak-eyed and ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... day when he was goin' take his dust to town, that if he come back and found that thing in the house, he'd do it up for her. 'So yu' better pack off your wooden dummy somewheres,' says he. And she just looked at him kind o' stone-like and solemn. For she don't care for his ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... learns to do 'is watchin' without it showin' plain; 'E learns to save a dummy, an' shove 'im straight again; 'E learns to check a ranker that's buyin' leave to shirk; An' 'e learns to make men like 'im so they'll learn to like ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... away. He informs you that he {342} has been privileged to discover truths unknown to the scientific world. This we know; but he proceeds to show that he is equally fortunate in art. He goes on to say that he will make use of you to bring those truths to light, "just as an artist makes use of a dummy for the purpose of arranging his drapery." The painter's lay-figure is for flowing robes; the hairdresser's dummy is for curly locks. Mr. James Smith should read Sam Weller's pathetic story of the "four wax dummies." As to his use of a dummy, it is quite correct. When I was at University College, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... had asked her to talk to him, Eric was relieved to find Barbara already playing; he had nothing more to say. There was nothing, indeed, to keep a man whose train left Euston before noon next day. He waited till Lady Poynter was dummy and then asked ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... approve of the character's language. "What Mr. March and I are trying to do is to carry on this thing so that there won't be any money in it—or very little; and we're planning to give the public a better article for the price than it's ever had before. Now here's a dummy we've had made up for 'Every Other Week', and as we've decided to adopt it, we would naturally like your opinion of it, so's to know what opinion to have of you." He reached forward and pushed toward Beaton a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... wealth and the life that I offered could count for anything with a woman like you, you laughed at me. You told me that if ever you married, you would wed a man, not a fortune nor a social position. You made me see myself as I was—a useless idler, a dummy for the tailors, a superficial chatterer of pretty nothings to vain and shallow women; you told me that I possessed not one manly trait of character that could compel the genuine love of an honest woman. You let me see the truth, that my proposal to you was almost an ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... disposed. No difficulty was experienced in securing clothing of the proper dimensions, and Jimmie soon stood forth to all external appearances as loyal and brave a Uhlan as ever followed the banner of the Emperor or stuck a lance into a dummy at riding exercise. He could not restrain a laugh at the peculiar round cap that was fitted to ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson

... money most unlikely in such a quarter; and it's better she should have none than a small fortune. I'm an old whist-player, and when I play dummy, there's nothing I hate more than to see two or three small ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... Tamasjo told them; and it was so rarely he ever spoke at all, that the other scouts had to smile and nod to each other; for Jimmy had on one occasion even gone so far as to declare his belief that the Indian must be a genuine "dummy" and unable to articulate at all, which, of ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... up the throwing apparatus, and set the clay pigeon on the rest. Jack took his breech-loader, raised it to the shoulder, and said, "Ready!" Raffles pulled the string, the dummy bird rocketed up, and ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... shadows blazed with colour as if the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during the day. The amazing old woman became very explicit. She suggested to the girl a corset and a petticoat with a cynical unreserve which humiliated me. Was I of no more account than a wooden dummy? ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... man in the district (outside the principal township)—a white man and a straight man—a white boss and a straight sportsman. He was a squatter, though a small one; a real squatter who lived on his run and worked with his men—no dummy, super, manager for a bank, or swollen cockatoo about Jack Denver. He was on the committees at agricultural shows and sports, great at picnics and dances, beloved by school children at school feasts (I wonder if they call them feasts still), giver of extra or special prizes, mostly ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... he observed, with a solemn look. "Well, it's only what you might call a dummy, being just an invitation I received a little while back to invest in some worthless mines over in the Hualpai Mountains of Mohave County. I kept it, meaning to figure out how these sharpers work their game. Now, ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... late. I bought through a dummy. It seemed a pity not to let then have the property since they wanted it so badly, so this morning he sold out for me to the Consolidated at a profit of a hundred ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... his success will not be great, but the triumph of his art is to win their sympathy. Those who went to scoff when the Great Preacher spoke, remained to pray. No man could speak as eloquently to empty seats, or to a dummy audience, as to a hall filled with intelligent people, yet Thoreau's ropes and hogsheads and pulling and pushing truckmen absurdly misrepresent the true relation that exists between a speaker and his hearers. Of course a speaker finds it uphill work if his audience is not with him, but that it is ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... education—he is a sensible and intelligent man enough—and some excellent arguments about the movement of religion, where I found him unexpectedly liberal-minded. He left me to do very much what I liked. I read in the mornings and before dinner; and after dinner we smoked or even played a game of dummy whist. It is a pretty part of the country, and when he was occupied in the afternoon, I walked about by myself. From first to last not a single word fell from Musgrave to indicate that he thought me in any way different, or suspected that I was not perfectly content, with ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... went out to the tennis court he found Stephanie idly batting the balls across the net with Cameron, who, being dummy, had strolled down to gibe at her—a pastime ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... looked at his work again, Tip saw he had forgotten to give the dummy a neck, by means of which he might fasten the pumpkinhead to the body. So he went again to the forest, which was not far away, and chopped from a tree several pieces of wood with which to complete his work. When he returned he ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... he'd come from Botusfieming—those bein' his last words— back to Botusfleming he should go, an' on that we cooked up a plan. Bill Adams being on duty in the sick-bay, there wasn' no difficulty in sewin' up a dummy in Eli's place; an' the dummy, sir, nex' day we dooly committed to the deep, Cap'n Crang hisself readin' the service. The real question was, what to do with Eli? Whereby, the purser and me bein' friends, I goes to him an' says, 'Look here,' I says, 'we'll be paid off in ten days ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a woman could not love a tailor's dummy. Her nature was warm, rich and passionate, and she was consumed with longing for the moment of bliss when her whole being would so burn with sacrificial fire for her beloved that she could walk with him naked in ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... you—and I have tried, Monsieur Fabien—he gets up in a rage, and forbids me to open my mouth on the subject. The house is not cheerful, Monsieur Fabien. Every one notices how he has changed; Monsieur Lorinet and his lady never enter the doors; Monsieur Hublette and Monsieur Horlet come and play dummy, looking all the time as if they had come for a funeral, thinking it will please the master. Even the clients say that the master treats them like dogs, and that he ought ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... cropping out, some blue-law atavism, some I know not what, that rebels against my taking a drink—like every other man. That cries out against my letting slip a harmless oath—again, like every other man that lives and breathes. Every man, that is, who is a man, a real man, not a dummy! If you've been mistaken in me, how much more have I, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... curious to observe the different customs of foreign sailors when sailing, homeward bound. The French, for instance, rig up a dummy man and trice him up to the main top, where he is made to oscillate with a pendulum movement until he gains sufficient impetus to clear the side, when he is let go overboard amidst the cheering of the men. The Russians man yards, white caps in hand, which, after ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... 9th Durham Light Infantry in the afternoon and repeated by the 8th Durham Light Infantry in the evening. The Battalion was holding the sector immediately on the right of the raiders, and its function was to draw the enemy's attention and fire by the exhibition of dummy figures and a dummy tank, which were later on view at the United Services Museum in Whitehall. 2nd Lieut. Leatherbarrow was in charge of these dummies, assisted by Sergeant P. Finn, who was awarded the Military ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown

... tried to scrag 'un. But Mr. Dale he druv at me wi' 's fist, and kep' a bunching me off wi' 's knees, and then when all the wind and the wickedness was gone out o' me, he tuk me behind th' scruff a' the neck and just paddled me along like a dummy." ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... command, but did not release their hold. Without any further pause, the man jumped from his buckboard squarely into the road, struck the man holding the rope a sweeping side blow that toppled him over like a sprawling dummy, jerked the coil from his hands, and tore toward his horses' heads. As if each feared to bar his advance, the men of the mob made way for him, taken by surprise. He brought the coil of rope with a stinging, whistling impact into the face ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... with the elegance of a milliner's dummy, and carrying two great card-board dress-boxes, and a young man dressed like a fashion plate, who also carries ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... how I prepared myself for the Ring by practising on a dummy bull.—I had no difficulty in sticking pins into it—it was quite calm. Then I tried the same game on a sheep, and got knocked down for my pains! One of my monkey tricks! Then I got acquainted with some Irish bulls, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various

... only being encountered. On the night of 11th June a demonstration was taken part in against Outpost Hill to assist a trench raid by the 5th K.O.S.B. against Belah Post. The distance between the lines here was about 600 yards. Men were sent out with dummy figures to a nullah about 300 yards from the Turkish line. At a fixed hour these dummies were fixed in position on the top of the bank in imitation of a line advancing to attack. The men took shelter ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... half fill your glass, or those chaps will get onto it that you're playing dummy!" As he spoke Logan poured champagne cup into Peter's tall tumbler and his own. The latter he filled with the ice-cold, sparkling liquid which, as he said, was "girls' drink," and then, seizing the glass, emptied it in ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... great satisfaction. Once he had been frozen out of a stock company; this time he had absolute control, and he found great pleasure in exercising it, though against Chalmers' protest. With swelling triumph he voted to himself, through his "dummy" directors, the salary of the former president—twelve thousand dollars a year—though he wondered a trifle that President Eastman submitted to his retirement with such equanimity, and after he walked away from that meeting he considered his business career as accomplished. He ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... here like a dummy, man!" He turned to the waiter. "You bring him de same vot you bring me. Unnerstand? And git a move on, cause I'm starvin'. Fade out now!" And the waiter ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... crick, That, beautiful, an' singin' songs, goes dancin' to the plains, So long ez it is fed by snows an' watered by the rains; But, uv that grace uv lovin' rains 'nd mountain snows bereft, Its bleachin' rocks, like dummy ghosts, is ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... which comes when one person finds close affinity in the understanding of a friend. When she spoke at the table her suddenness always left a silence in its wake. At bridge her moves were so spasmodic that, when opposite dummy, she seemed to play the two cards with a simultaneous movement. The same mannerisms were in her outdoor games, a second service at tennis often following a faulty first so rapidly that her opponent would sometimes be almost unaware that ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... abusing tutors, open each our copy, and, with all due emphasis and intonation, go regularly through the scenes of "She Stoops to Conquer." This was all the study we ever gave to our parts: and even thus it was difficult to get a muster of all the performers, and we had generally to play dummy for some one or more of the characters, or "double" them, as the professionals call it. The excuses for absenteeism were various. Mrs Hardcastle and Tony were gone to Woodstock with a team, and were not to be waited for; Diggory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... possible without creating a scandal. In fact, for some years previous to this, various agents had already been employed—Edward Strobik, president of council, Asa Conklin, the then incumbent of the mayor's chair, Thomas Wycroft, alderman, Jacob Harmon, alderman, and others—to organize dummy companies under various names, whose business it was to deal in those things which the city needed—lumber, stone, steel, iron, cement—a long list—and of course, always at a fat profit to those ultimately behind the dummy companies, so organized. It saved the city ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... Chesterton summed it up, he felt as if Darrow had been arguing all afternoon with his fundamentalist aunt, and simply kept sparring with a dummy of his own mental making. When something went wrong with the microphone, Darrow sat back until it could be fixed. Whereupon G.K.C. jumped up and carried on in his natural voice, "Science you see is not infallible!" . . . Chesterton had the audience with him from the start, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... spark of courage left," it says, "take this." "Perhaps I may," replies Napoleon, "if you'll take the flint out." By his side we find a pot of brimstone, numerous medicine bottles, and "a treatise on the itch, by Dr. Scratch."[70] One of the imperial boots, mounted on a tiny carriage, forms a dummy cannon. His back leans against a tree, to which is nailed the "Imperial Crow," while from the branches depends a ragged pair of breeches and stockings. It was a sorry libel on the unfortunate emperor, whose courage was undoubted, and who, at this time, instead of being the scarecrow ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... own crowd Amory saw men kept out for wearing green hats, for being "a damn tailor's dummy," for having "too much pull in heaven," for getting drunk one night "not like a gentleman, by God," or for unfathomable secret reasons known to no one but the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... work.] The breach is finished. Good! I enter. But no, I will not enter yet. I will shove a dummy in. [He does so.] Ah, no one is there. Praise be to Skanda! [He enters and looks about.] See! Two men asleep. Come, for my own protection I will open the door. But the house is old and the door squeaks. I must look for water. Now where might water be? [He looks about, ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... would stop,[B] now that winter is over, and make jelly and jam for the brave and cheerful little Belgian army. I am aware that it is less pleasant than knitting. It cannot be taken to lectures or musicales. One cannot make jam between the courses of a luncheon or a dinner party, or during the dummy hand at bridge. But the men have so little—unsweetened coffee and black bread for breakfast; a stew of meat and vegetables at mid-day, taken to them, when it can be taken, but carried miles from where it is cooked, and usually ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Colonel grumbled something about its being "always out of order when you've got particular and especial use for it," but he didn't explain that one of the reasons for this was that the thing was only a dummy and hadn't any wire attached to it. And yet the Colonel often used it—when visitors were present—and seemed to get messages through it. Mourning paper and a seal were ordered, then the friends took ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of the earth's space and of the light of day is withheld. [Looking down at him fiercely.] The half-starved who are bidden to stand with their feet in the kennel to watch gay processions in which you and your kind are borne high. Those who would strip the robes from a dummy aristocracy and cast the broken dolls into the limbo of a nation's discarded toys. Those who—mark me!—are already upon the highway, marching, marching; whose time is coming as surely as ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... attempting to come down to life from above. Instead of being content to carry through life a sufficiently wonderful being named David Grayson I tried desperately to set up and support a sort of dummy creature which, so clad, so housed, so fed, should appear to be what I thought David Grayson ought to appear in the eyes of the world. Oh, I spent quite a lifetime ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... later, aground, Bors said impatiently, "Half a dozen ships have checked out with me. I sent a single dummy-warhead missile at each one. They knew I was trying something new. They tried interceptors. Not one worked. Worse, my missiles drew the interceptors off-course so they lost their original aim on the Isis. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... preoccupied with their own work, had not much attention to spare for the aeroplanes. In France, a year earlier, aeroplanes had been systematically practised with cavalry, sometimes to direct a forced march, sometimes to detect dummy field works, prepared to deceive the cavalry and to lead them into ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... the dummy that had stood him so well for the time, Tom did not hesitate to throw him overboard as a useless incumbrance, and, thus relieved of the dead weight, he sped forward with wonderful speed. In a short time after that the redskins ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... thousand horse-power English words and phrases, and the loose shadows of English thought, which are now so many Aunt Sallies for all the world to fling a jeer at, might among other races pass into dummy soldiers, and from dummy soldiers into trampling, hope-bestirred crowds, and so on, out of the province of Ali Baba and into the columns of serious reflection. Mr. Wordsworth and his friends the Dakhani Brahmans should consider how painful it would be, when deprived of the consolations of religion, to be solemnly ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... find any flaws in my reasoning I will be glad. The first thing to observe is that the diminutive Frenchman drew on himself the special vengeance of the Turks when I exposed the attempt to foist on them a collection of dummy diamonds. Yet he actually had the nerve to return to the Rue Barbette later in the day. He has not been seen since, so the little scoundrel is either dead or a prisoner in Hussein-ul-Mulk's flat. As I cannot permit myself to participate ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... it is. I'm as bad as any of the sailors. Of course it's the brutes' nature; but I feel a thorough satisfaction when one is caught and killed; and if it was not that I don't want to have any firing just now, I'd go back and make some kind of a dummy with a ship's fender and some old clothes, and we'd pitch it overboard. It would tempt them to come at it, and we'd put in ball-cartridge and try a bit of shooting, and finish off ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... Braithwaite. He could love her so that it seemed that if he did not win her, he would never be able to love any other woman; but he could not trust her. He began to question whether she had ever been the woman he had tried to think her. Perhaps she was only a dummy and his imagination had clothed her with affection. He had attributed to her ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... cursing and wailing and gnashing of teeth in Blackwater's saloons that night, and some were for hanging Wunpost; but in the morning, when they woke up and found Eells and Lapham gone, they transferred their rage to them. A committee composed of the dummy directors, who had allowed Eells to do what he would, discovered from the books that the bank had been looted and that Eells was a fugitive from justice. He had diverted the bank's funds to his own private uses, leaving only ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... and so do I—and myself the biggest fool of any. They have charged our centre with a dummy cargo, while they run the real stuff far on either flank. Is ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Company there, under the extremely flexible and evershifting laws of the Republic of Mexico. Luiz is a Peruvian and speaks Spanish, and knows the Mexican temperament. He can easily procure three Mexicans to act as a dummy board of directors; his own name, of course, for obvious reasons, must never appear in connection with this company. A thousand dollars ought to cover this ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... like so summarily dismissing my garrison, but of course you are right, father," said Percy; and he and Rupert went round and began to throw the dummy warriors off the platform, two of the pumpkins splitting, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... all her authority, who is not queen over her kitchen, her chamber, and her drawing-room or best parlor, does a very dangerous and foolish thing, and will soon dwarf down into a mere assenting dummy. Now old Burleigh, the wise counselor of Queen Elizabeth, has, in his advice to his son, left it upon record that "thou shalt find there is nothing so irksome in life as a female fool." A wife who is the mere echo of her husband's opinions; who waits ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... added, "What if we play a little game! With a double dummy, the French way, or Norwegian Skat, if you like. That only ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... lift the bills into those false bottoms, well screened by the trays from the TV monitors. Barney was in on it, of course. And after the joint had lost enough dough that way, Rose and Simonetti would have had to sell out. Only the buyer would have been a dummy for Rose and Smythe, using money Smythe ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett

... in bluff, you know," that "slim duyvel," the Commandant of the rooineks, said long afterwards. "And we bluffed about the Mines, real and dummy, for all ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... to barricade, and if it were it was no good to build a barricade there, as men behind it could only fire into the house opposite. Which made him the more angry, because it was true, and the thing a mere dummy to scare people. So sure were the Italians that they were 'going to get the town taken this time that the correspondents wrote gory accounts of its capture and the slaughter of the inhabitants, and sent them ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... surrounded by glasses, stood on the table where the two least-considered of his lieutenants, the dummy Directors, had left it. He poured a small quantity and sipped it. During the whole eventful day it had not occurred to him before to drink; the taste of the neat liquor seemed on the instant to calm and refresh his brain. With more deliberation, he ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... plan. A dummy: the imitation of a proposed final effect. Use of dummy in sales work. Use of layout. Function of layout man. Binding schemes for dummies. Dummy envelopes. ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... could. Willis knew that in the darkness he might easily pass for one of the guards, so carefully had he disguised himself. He wore an old raincoat, decorated with German insignia and numerals, and a large belt-buckle, all cut out of a tin can. He carried a dummy wooden gun, bundles of food, maps, and a compass; and he wore a ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... abruptly and started up, for his uncle had seized a book, which usually lay open on his desk, and was in fact a sort of dummy intended to indicate the "study" that was supposed to go on there. Next moment Frank sprang laughing into the passage, and the book flew with a crash against the panels of the door as he shut it behind ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne

... took in raising the flag on the tower of the chapel, and in defending that flag, and in tearing down a dummy raised in their colors by the Crows in the public square of the village—of this and many other delightfully improper pranks there is no room to tell here; and you must rest content with hearing of the important athletic affair—the affair ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... had dealt, and having gone three in "no trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So also did Alice—for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money, and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There were four bridge tables fully occupied ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... on the edge of the pay-window, from behind which came roaring noises that the Americans within fancied Spaniards, or Greeks, or Roumanians must understand because they were not English noises; still we pounced upon the paid as upon a tackling-dummy in the early days ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... of each of his younger children and they gleefully tossed them in. The diver was in the bubbling water, they could not see him, but presently, through a telephone, he gave the dates on the coins. Then he came up to the surface of the water carrying a dummy that looked like a drowned man and let the visitors see him ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... lumber yards and to the west were little shops, mostly one-storied, widely scattered. Chinese laundries, a livery stable or two. The pavements were stretches of boardwalk interspersed with sand or mud, trodden into passable trails. Down the broad center ran a track on which for years a dummy engine had labored back and forth, drawing flat cars laden with sand. Now most of the sand hills were leveled above Kearny street. Benito picked his way along the northern side of Market street till he came to Hayes. There the new horse car line ran to Hayes park. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... are dummies," laughed Hal Hastings. "They're aboard just for dummy torpedo practice. There isn't a kick in a dozen of 'em. Go back and ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... many women on East Fourteenth Street. With the seeing eye of the artist, the dummy-chucker looked them over and rejected them. Kindly-seeming, generously fat, the cheap movie houses disgorged them. A dozen alien tongues smote the air, and every one of them hinted of far lands of poverty, of journeys made and hardships undergone. No better field for beggary ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... was made up of a number of exact fours. There were two over; two middle-aged ladies, a maiden and a widow: and they, perhaps more happy than any of the others, certainly more silent for neither of them had a partner to scold, were hard at work at double-dummy in ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... a dressmaker's dummy, the wire and padded model on which dresses are fitted and shown. With its armless and headless bust, abruptly ending in a hooped wire skirt, it completely filled the ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... down the scuttle. "All hands on deck and look lively, or I'll make a tailor's dummy ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore



Words linked to "Dummy" :   make, cartridge, deaf-and-dumb person, mannequin, mannikin, mute, manikin, simple, deaf-mute, produce, pinhead, manakin, figure, simpleton, lay figure, form, create, artificial, unreal



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com