Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A hollow-point small-arms bullet designed to expand upon impact, inflicting a gaping wound.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A bullet, with a soft nose, that expands upon impact to cause a gaping wound.
  • noun An ignorant person, an idiot

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a soft-nosed small-arms bullet that expands when it hits a target and causes a gaping wound

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Dum Dum, a town of northeast India.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Dum Dum, a city in India where the type of bullet was developed, from Hindi दमदम (Damdam) (Bengali দমদম (Dômdôm)), from  (damdama, "a raised mound or battery")

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the adjective dumb

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Examples

Comments

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  • Why is this tagged 'WeirdNet'; was someone thinking of DumDums?

    January 31, 2009

  • Well... that seems likely. Or else maybe he/she was thinking of the sorta-not-really-name-calling name, "You dumdum."

    January 31, 2009