Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Dummy   Listen
adjective
Dummy  adj.  
1.
Silent; mute; noiseless; as a dummy engine.
2.
Fictitious or sham; feigned; as, a dummy watch.
Dummy car. See under Car.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Dummy" Quotes from Famous Books



... seckshun I thought he was about due to be out of breath. I had a little rip in my pants that I hadnt had time to sew up. Nothing anybodied notice. Just my knee stickin thru. That fello could see a hole in your undershirt tho. When he came up to me he looked me over like I was a windo dummy that he didnt care much about. Then he says to the Captin "What do you mean by lettin a man ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... insurance companies, and the Hughes investigation supports this, the real power was held not by the president, not by the voters or policy-holders, but by men who were not even directors. After a while we took it as a matter of course that the head of a company was an administrative dummy, with a dependence on unofficial power similar to that of Governor Dix on Boss Murphy. That seems to be typical of the whole economic life of this country. It is controlled by groups of men whose influence extends like a web ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... could be more dull. The Minister would neither bet nor stake, and the immense interest which he took in every card that was played ludicrously contrasted with the rather sullen looks of the Prince and the very sleepy ones of Vivian. Whenever Mr. Beckendorff played for dummy he always looked with the most searching eye into the next adversary's face, as if he would read his cards in his features. The first rubber lasted an hour and a half, three long games, which Mr. Beckendorff, to his triumph, hardly won. In the first ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... one night and put up a dummy in its place." The C.R.E once again considered the wretched stump. "Not a bad idea, General; the only question is who is to do it. It will have to be a good model, or the Huns will spot the difference; and . . ." Suddenly his face ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... she might be aware of other facts. This was a very amazing discovery 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: Did that speak just now? Will it speak again? It was as exciting, for the mere wonder ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... 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, finds water, and ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... Geological Congress, at which he was to have presided.] seems to have gone off excellently. I consider that my own performance of the part of dummy was distinguished. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... accomplished, Mr. Peacock exclaimed triumphantly: "And now, what say you, my lads, to a game at cards? Three of us,—whist and a dummy; nothing better, eh?" As he spoke, he produced from his coat-pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a nightcap, a tooth-brush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps of sugar, the remains of a bun, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... up that the simple old dummy was to keep his eye on the panorama after that, and as soon as a stunning picture was reeled out he was to fit it to a dot with a piece of music that would help the audience to get the idea of the subject, and warm them up like a camp-meeting revival. That sort of thing would corral their sympathies, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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 wielders of the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... B.I. call the ridiculous dummy a "portrait" but describes it as the "Figure put for" (that is "instead of") and as "the Print," and as "his Picture"; he likewise most clearly tells us to "looke not on his (ridiculous) Picture, but (only) his Booke." It seems, therefore, evident that he knew the secret ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... was vested in the Emperor, which really left things very much as they had been. The new charter was not found to be of much value, and there is little doubt that the Manchus regarded it in the light of what is known in China as a "dummy document," a measure to be extolled in theory, but not intended to appear in practice. Suddenly, in September 1911, the great revolution broke out, and the end came ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... defied the most ardent exploration, and failed to show any traces of a burial. The mystery was at last solved by Professor Petrie, who, with his usual keen perception, soon came to the conclusion that the whole tomb was a dummy, built solely to hide an enormous mass of rock chippings the presence of which had been a puzzle for some time. These masons' chippings were evidently the output from some large cutting in the rock, and it became apparent that ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... end was used as a study, and one side of it graced with books, all handsomely bound: the other side, with a very beautiful organ that had an oval mirror in the midst of its gilt dummy-pipes. All this made a cozy nook in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... 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 when at the bank he would take out ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... Notice Boards of caution and warning against their fellow kind. Instead of the kindly and unnecessary, even ridiculous little Gygi, there were big, grave policemen by the score, a whole army of them; and everywhere grinned the Notice Boards, like automatic, dummy policemen, mocking joy with their insulting warnings. The heart was oppressed with this constant reminder that safety could only be secured by great care and trouble— safety for the little personal self; protection from all kinds of robbery, depredation, and attack; beware ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... on my knee, but bless you! 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 him under ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... pursuits, and sat smoking on rocks by the half day, excusing indolence on the ground of the thrilling story I was going to get. I learned over again painfully the boyhood way of drinking from a brook, and lay face downward on island stones. With the enthusiastic help of my children, I made a dummy stuffed with pine cones, and let him float at the end of a rope. Never a tentacle, let alone octopus, appeared. I had to rest content with Victor Hugo's stirring picture in "The ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... little while Caroline Darrah rose from a dummy and spoke in a low pleading tone to Polly, who had been watching her game, standing ready to score. Polly demurred, then consented and sat down while Caroline Darrah took her departure, quietly but ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... several rocky islands, that have probably been detached from the mainland by volcanic action, and the shore. The torpedoes were tried on dummy vessels, while a troop of soldiers stood guard at all the approaches to the place in order to prevent inquisitive individuals as well as Chilean spies, from learning the nature of the work going on. Don Nicholas was highly pleased and ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... lay 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 ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... incorporate the North and South American Steamship 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

... of vessels sunk; new attack is planned by Allies, with Russia co-operating; Turks say that the ships sunk on March 18 were torpedoed; Chilean seamen say Dresden was sunk in Chilean waters; Smyrna garrison is reinforced; dummy war fleet, composed of disguised merchantmen, is reported to be ready in England for use in strategy ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... bytes of the article text. The bug was triggered by having the text of the article start with a space or tab. This bug was quickly personified as a mythical creature called the 'line eater', and postings often included a dummy line of 'line eater food'. Ironically, line eater 'food' not beginning with a space or tab wasn't actually eaten, since the bug was avoided; but if there *was* a space or tab before it, then the line ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... bridge. Though he 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 her ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... in their relationship at that time, that whatever she did caused him to hate her. He hated her when he found that she proposed to set him up as the Lord of Branshaw again—as a sort of dummy lord, in swaddling clothes. He imagined that she had done this in order to separate him from Maisie Maidan. Hatred hung in all the heavy nights and filled the shadowy corners of the room. So when ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... more distinctly and it slowly went 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 extremely beautiful. Then, resisting the attempts of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... journeying in the 88th year of his pilgrimage is not likely to throw off such a chronic malady. Indeed were I well enough to come I am deaf as a post and half blind, and if I were with you I should only be able to play dummy. Several years have passed away since I was last at your Visitation and I had great joy in seeing Mrs Airy and some lady friends at the Observatory, but I could not then attend the dinner. At that Meeting were many faces that I knew, but strangely altered by the rude ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... now a commissary of police, "have gathered together on their route" all they could find in the workshops "and in the stores," the multitude packed into the Place Vendome not knowing what was demanded in their name.[34111]—These dummy tumults are, however, useful; they show the Convention its master, and prepare the way for a more efficient invasion. The day Marat was acquitted, the whole of his sewer, male and female, came along with him; under pretext of parading before the Convention, they invaded the hall, scattered ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... quizzically. They took their seats on the dummy, just as the sun, a golden ball, was about to glide behind Lone Mountain. Late afternoon is a quiet time, and Ruth and Louis did ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... the girl was scared to death of the machine itself, or whether she simply decided to be difficult. And she uttered the proper replies with all of the promptness—and intelligence—of a ventriloquist's dummy: ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... neighboring manor. When, thirty years later, the son of this lord loaned me a small sum of money, my father said to me: "Don't hesitate to take the money; his father took ten thousand thalers from me at dummy whist, a little at a time." Perhaps this figure was too high, but however that may be, the sum was at all events large enough to throw his credit and debit out of balance and to make him, among other things, a very tardy payer ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... 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 blessed result ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... said Jack; "who'd a thought it; there's a go! Wouldn't he do for a dummy—to lead a forlorn hope, or to put among ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... of the mill came the thunder of rolling barrels of sugar, and (prison-like sounds) there was a great rattling of chains as the mules were harried with stimulant imprecations to their places by the waggon-tongues. A little vicious "dummy" engine, with a train of flat cars in tow, stewed and fumed on the plantation tap of the narrow-gauge railroad, and a toiling, hurrying, hallooing stream of workers were dimly seen in the half darkness loading the train with the weekly output of sugar. Here was a poem; an epic—nay, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... thing without a name; A sort of dummy in the game? "Not young, not old:" A world is told Of misery in that lengthened phrase; Yet, gad, although my coat be smooth, ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... critter 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

... Spicer. He was a big, dark, dark-haired and whiskered man. I had an idea that he wasn't a selector at all, only a 'dummy' for the squatter of the Cobborah run. You see, selectors were allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral leases. The squatters kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of dodges and paltry persecution. The squatter would get as much freehold as he could afford, 'select' as much land as ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... deliberately forced upon the attention of the child. Everything is providently supplied that would be calculated to occupy her attention with commonplace facts instead of with fancies. The child is not encouraged to make a living creature of this inanimate dummy, to tell it stories, or to exercise her imagination in some other way. She is provided with a round of prosaic and extremely material duties, and her mind is carefully kept within these bounds by details of soap ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... when the 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 ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope

... to France, Unless you know the lingo; If you do, like me, You'll repent, by jingo. Starving like a fool, And silent as a mummy, There I stood alone, A nation with a dummy. ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss

... 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 ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... 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 a man carved in relief. Here again are the tufted hat, the ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock

... my good sir,' said Mr Pecksniff to Anthony; 'now that we are alone, pray tell me what I can do for you. I say alone, because I believe that our dear friend Mr Chuffey is, metaphysically speaking, a—shall I say a dummy?' asked Mr Pecksniff with his sweetest smile, and his head ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... rest in the deep shadow of enormous trees. Leaning over the rail of a snug little harbor two dummy men in rakish hats and dark coats stared at the new arrivals with lack-luster eyes. And the dummies, and the wooden wall on which they were propped, with a strange painted motto consisting of snakes, and dogs, and sticks, and a yard measure, were all repeated with crystal-clear precision ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... The DUMMY CARTRIDGE is tin plated and the shell is provided with six longitudinal corrugations and three circular holes. The primer contains no percussion composition. It is intended for drill purposes to accustom the soldier to the operation of loading ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... very trenchant in allusion, but I am obliged to say seriously that Carlyle by no means reached the root of the matter. The mere tailor's dummy is deplorable, despicable, detestable, but a real man is none the worse if he gives way to the imperious human desire for adornment, and some of the men who have made permanent marks on the world's face have been ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... accompanied by rude African drum notes and songs. They are dressed in the most fantastic and barbarous disguises, some wearing cow's horns, others masks representing the heads of wild beasts, and some are seen prancing on dummy horses. All wear the most gorgeous colors, and go from point to point on the plazas and paseos, asking for donations from every one they meet. It is customary to respond to these demands in a moderate way, and the greatest reasonable latitude is given to the blacks on the occasion; reminding ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... brushed 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 ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... doubtful; then went on confessing: "Auntie says I'm a dummy, because I don't talk very much. And I'm awfully timid. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... Ripley! Don't be afraid. It's only a leather dummy. It can't hurt you! Now, tackle the dummy around ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock

... 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 have ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... 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, right and left ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... a dummy woman, sir," explained the butcher's nephew, hurrying up. "I think she's one of them tinkers that's outside the town." Then with a long screech, "Look! Look over! Tiger, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... where the question was put, a young fellow, whose heavy, black mustache prudently hid lips coarse and sneering, came to his feet like a dummy of a man and glared dazedly at his companions, as if their faces should tell him whose hand it was that gripped the braided collar of his jacket. He was not long in doubt, however. The voice of Valencia grated vitriolic sentences in his ear, and the free hand of Valencia was lifted to deal ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... forget whatever doubts you may have. Remember only her years of 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, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... room for the transfer of cargoes from the dock to the company's yards inside the walls. Without hesitation he drew her after him up this wide, sinister roadway. They stumbled on over the rails of the "dummy track," collided with collier trucks, slipped on the soggy chutes, but all the while forged ahead toward the gates that so surely lay ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... then a dummy, made of rubble within a revetment of heavy flint nodules, which was faced with fine limestone. It was erected on a pyloni-form base with heavy cornice of the usual Egyptian pattern. This central pyramid was surrounded by a roofed hall or ambulatory of small octagonal pillars, the outside wall ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... attic and counting your regiments. Numerous numbered cards dotted the country wherever the eye might fall; one, perhaps, representing a whole army with supports, another a solitary horseman dragging some ammunition, another nothing but a dummy that might paralyse the efforts of a corps, and overawe it into a ruinous inactivity. To uncover these cards and unmask the forces for which they stood was the duty of the cavalry vedettes, whose movements were governed by an elaborate and most vexatious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 his unsecured ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... origin of these fires; but about the middle of March something overheard by a white citizen led to the implicating of nine Negroes. These men were arrested and confined for the night of March 15 in a warehouse to await trial the next morning, a dummy guard of six men being placed before the door. About midnight a mob came, pushed open the door, and fired two volleys at the Negroes, killing four immediately and fatally wounding four more. The ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... "It's a dummy trench!" murmured Corporal Wilson. "The idea is to have their men seem to retreat into it when the fighting takes place on this part of the line. Our boys come on in pursuit, jump over the edge, come down on these sharp stakes and are spitted like larks. ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... no place to talk. Yet it was not all pure joy; for here was the knowledge which we both had, that I must go away, and that God only knew when I should get back again; and, whatever that knowledge was to Dorothy, it was as a sword for pain to me. As for my Cousin Tom, he was no better than a dummy; for he was still terrified at all that had happened, and at the magistrate's words to him. I told them both, while we were still in the house, that I must go to London, partly for that that was the last place in the ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... produced, the maitre d'hotel was Birdie, and Cherry-Garrard the producer of surprises in the shape of toys which adorned the Christmas Tree that followed on the dinner. Everybody got something from the tree, which was in reality no tree at all, for it was a cleverly constructed dummy, with sticks for branches and coloured paper leaves. Still, it carried little fairy candles and ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... of September 27, 1915, the two brigades, leaving their tents standing to deceive the Turks, crossed the Tigris by a flying bridge. It is said that this dummy camp which a Turkish division was facing was the direct cause that enabled the British to win a victory. If the Turks had concentrated all their forces on the north bank of the river the British attack would undoubtedly have failed. It was the absence ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... of the customs-house, a dummy engine noisily plies up and down among the long-horned carabaos and piles of merchandise. Types of all nations are encountered here. The immigration office swarms with Chinamen herded together, rounded up by some contractor. Every Chinaman must have his photograph, his number, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... Kearton relates how he has frequently fooled sitting birds with wooden eggs. He put his counterfeits, painted and marked like the originals, into the nests of the song thrush, the blackbird, and the grasshopper warbler, and in no case was the imposition detected. In the warbler's nest he placed dummy eggs twice the size of her own, and the bird proceeded to brood them without the slightest sign of suspicion that they were not of ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... they have hard hands; and the carpenter and sail-maker practically understand the duties which they are called upon to superintend. They mess by themselves. Invariably four in number, they never have need to play whist with a dummy. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... every little thing you did when showing us how to revive a partly drowned person; and Thad, I practiced on a dummy when nobody was around to laugh. I'm positive I have it down pat, and ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... in all the older heretical completeness. Although atheistic the Jain worshipped the Teacher, and paid some regard to the Brahmanical divinities, just as he worships the Hindu gods to-day, for the atheistical systems admitted gods as demi-gods or dummy gods, and in point of fact became very superstitious. Yet are both founder-worship and superstition rather the growth of later generations than the original practice. The atheism of the Jain means denial of ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... other, 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 manilla is a game for two; and they have to be content with games for two, because no one in this ward can get up, and communication is only easy ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... tell us something about it," said Harry, as we rattled swiftly over the rails in the steam-dummy; "that is, when we get out ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... across towards the window, and laid her fingers upon the heavy curtains. Cecil de la Borne, who was dummy, got up and stood by ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... watchers can devote his attention to the game as it should be devoted. Two watchers are also likely to bump into each other as they make their way around the table looking over the players' shoulders. If there are more watchers than there are tables, two can share one table between them, one being dummy while the other watches. In this event the first one should watch until the hand has been dealt and six tricks taken, being relieved by the second one for the remaining tricks and the marking ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... never pay any more attention to me than if I was a dummy. It takes their father to bring them to terms ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... he made up an eight-page "dummy," pasted an attractive picture on the cover, indicated the material to go inside, and the next morning showed it to the manager of the theatre. The programme as issued was an item of considerable expense to the management; Edward offered to supply his new programme without cost, provided he ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... 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

... and wound 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 Jack ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... wants some of that blue spar, and I promised to get a lot. Must go down one of these days with Dummy Rugg: he says he knows of some ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... 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. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... that of the day before. He may try to improve gradually, but, in the main, it is the same thing over and over again. Our home life ought not to be like that. A man ought not to be merely an engine or a cash-book; a woman ought to be something more than a dummy or a fashion-plate; our children should not be like so many spools of thread or suits of clothes, turned in the same lathe, spun to the same yarn, and cut according to the same pattern and rule. I'm sure I could never have done my work and brought up six children without some sort of a system, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... 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

... you shall have the Tales of my Grandfather soon, but I guess we'll try and finish off The Wrecker first. A propos of whom, please send some advanced sheets to Cassell's—away ahead of you—so that they may get a dummy out. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... '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

... 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

... happen that the party 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

... 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 ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... regards all thieves as THE thief, all murderers as THE murderer, and the human shape disappears in the mind of the legislator, while it re-appears before the judge. Before the essayist and legislator, the criminal is a sort of moving dummy, on whose hack the judge may paste an article of the penal code. If you leave out of consideration the established cases of exceptional and rare human psychology mentioned in the penal code, all other cases serve the judge ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... Norman. "We will buy ten shares of Universal Fuel Company through a dummy and bring suit to dissolve it. I looked into the matter for Burroughs once when he was after the Fosdick-Langdon group. Universal Fuel wouldn't dare defend the action I could bring. We could get what we pleased for our ten shares to let up on the suit. The moment ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... Rose, having Dummy for a partner, soon discovered the fact and lately had begun to feel as she fancied Wall must have done when Pyramus wooed Thisbe through its chinks. She was a little startled at first, then amused, then anxious, then heartily interested, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... a dummy pilot-train to be sacrificed if any bridges or trestles were blown up or if any new attempts were made at producing artificially broken rails. We four established ourselves as best we could in a car in the center of the treasure- train, ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... card on the opposite side of the table and toward the bed, and another on his side of the table for himself. The first was a deuce, his own card, a king. He then shuffled and cut again. This time "dummy" had a queen, and himself a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third deal. It brought his adversary a deuce, and himself a king again. "Two out ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... A dummy cannon, of painted wood, had been mounted upon the flat roof of the commandant's quarters. But the Indian soon saw that it did not awaken. They laughed and jeered, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... this inclosure they sometimes succeeded in driving the noble game. Great numbers of Indians were of course required, more, indeed, than they could usually muster, counting in squaws, children, and all; they were compelled, therefore, to build rows of dummy hunters out of stones, along the ridge-tops which they wished to prevent the sheep from crossing. And, without discrediting the sagacity of the game, these dummies were found effective; for, with a few live ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... was a 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

... the relatively feeble control currents, which, in turn, close or open the switches in the main power circuits. The control switches are systematically assembled upon the control bench board in conjunction with dummy bus bars and other apparent (but not real) metallic connections, the whole constituting at all times a correct diagram of the existing connections of the main power circuits. Every time the operator ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men, a thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her experience! "What business," he thought, digging in his dummy spurs, "has our class to patronise? We 're the only people who have n't an idea of what life really means." Chips of dried turf and dust came flying back, stinging his face. He gained on her, drew almost within reach, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... pack of us," bellowed Halloway gleefully. "Afore God, I takes my hat off ter ye—but why didn't ye suffer some man ter tote ther dummy bundle?" ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... sitting behind the lamp. And the husband coming in, harpooned that dummy wife with his great bird-spear. And the thing shrieked as if with pain and fell down. But when he looked closer, there was no blood to be seen, nothing but some stuffed-out clothes. And ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown

... liked the steady throb of its powerful motors, the enormous spread of its wings, the slow, ponderous way it had of answering to the controls. It was our business to take officer observers for long trips about the country while they made photographs, spotted dummy batteries, and perfected themselves in the wireless code. At that time the Caudron had almost passed its period of usefulness at the front, and there was a prospect of our being transferred to the yet larger and more powerful Letord, a three-passenger biplane carrying two machine gunners ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... give blue-jay cry," 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, ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... all sitting 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

... "that's Milly, the 'ired girl; she's no I more than that, if she be her aunt's niece. And 'ard work for one's niece. Me and Woods, if we'd 'ad one, would have done better for her nor that, makin' her work like a slave or a dummy. Cows, and pigs, and poultry, and dish-washing, and scrubbing, and lamps, and starched fronts, and fine gentlemen—but she's well paid, she's well paid. She's to marry one of the fine gentlemen, Mr. Joseph it is, and they're to live on at the Inn with Milly as mistress, and her fine husband ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... used to stop and talk to him every day. One day he was missing. He had been supposed to be sick or asleep for several hours, for apparently lie lay in bed, and was lying very still. But that was only an ingeniously constructed dummy. The young man himself had made a hole under his bed into an adjoining vacant cell, the door of which stood open. He had crawled through his hole, come out of the vacant cell door, and gone up to ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott

... something different altogether from God? Or, if we use the phrase of the Old Testament. prophet and of Jesus himself, if religion is vision of God, what is our religion, if after all we are not seeing God at all, but something else—a dummy god, like that of the Pharisees, some trifling martinet who can be humbugged—or, to come to ourselves, a majestic bundle of abstract nouns loosely tied up in impersonality? For all such Jesus has a ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... Britling found much talk and belligerent stir. In the hall Wilkins the author was displaying a dummy rifle of bent iron rod to several interested members. It was to be used for drilling until rifles could be got, and it could be made for eighteen pence. This was the first intimation Mr. Britling got that the want of foresight of the War Office only began with its unpreparedness for recruits. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... threw my coat back, thrust my thumbs into my trousers pockets and slowly turned about like a ready-made tailor's dummy. "Monson," said I, "what do you ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... will, to begin, have a dummy board of directors. Also, my road cannot be private; it must be a common carrier, and that's where the shoe pinches. Common carriers are subject to the rules and regulations ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... 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, ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... sympathy 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 ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... to speak, with blood and tears. For seven months it was impossible for the gunner in training even to see, much less to work or fire the gun to which he was being trained. Zealous officers provided dummy wooden guns for their men. All kinds of devices were tried. And even when the guns themselves arrived, they came often without the indispensable accessories—range-finders, directors, and ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... young people disappeared. Captain Granet and Geraldine remained upon the couch, talking in low voices. Once Thomson, when he was dummy, crossed the room and approached them. Their ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... give him one. Men! We'll have to give up that sleep I talked about. This limping dummy of a fakir thinks he's got us frightened, and we've got to teach him different. There's some reason why we're not being attacked as yet. There's something fishy going on, and this swab's at the bottom of it! We want him, too, on a charge of murder, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... 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

... too lazy to mend your bell, you should at least wait in the hall to let people in when they rattle the bell handle. There, now, you've dropped my fur cloak—dummy!" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... a flash could be called thinking—how I, as an instructor, would have told a rookie to act, working on a dummy. I had a sort of detached feeling as though ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... with indignation for many a day. Tall and stately she looked, with her flags a-peak and everything in trim: yards all aloft, and squared to an inch and her sails rolled up without crease like the dummy covers on the booms of a King's yacht. A gallant ship, and a credit to ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... 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 going ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... He'll probably be drunk but he's still on the medical register and he's the man I want. Take him straight away to Washburn Avenue, and don't forget that it's his nursing home and not mine. My name doesn't occur in this matter and you'd better get a dummy to do the buying for you from ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... he kept saying, stopping first before Ryabovitch and then before Merzlyakov. "What a fool and a dummy a man must be not to get hold of any beer! Eh? ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... confronted with a sloping grassy bank, crowned with a battlemented wall, and we discover that only through its bars and posterns can we enter the city, and feast our eyes on the relics of the Middle Ages within. It is no dummy wall put up to please visitors, for right down to the siege of 1644, when the Parliamentary army battered Walmgate Bar with their artillery, it has withstood many assaults and investments. Repairs and restorations have been carried ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... the 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 with her ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... with you is that you tackle a dummy just the way you'd catch a sack of potatoes that was being thrown out of a burning ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... 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 ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... what. The first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy." ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... 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 him, ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne

... 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 had a command to dine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... years as too horrible even to dream of; years needed to live down the worst raw sense of guilt, and become hardened to inevitable life. Then she filled in her scenario with Sir Adrian Torrens, the blind Squire of Pensham Steynes, and his beautiful and accomplished wife, a dummy with no great vitality, constructed entirely out of a ring on Mr. Torrens's finger and an allusion of Irene's to the Miss Gertrude Abercrombie, whose skill in needlework surpassed Arachne's. Gwen did not supply this lady with a sufficiently well-marked human heart. Perhaps the temptation to make ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... been acting strangely all day. Once, early in the evening, when I had doubled no trump, he led me a club without apology, and later on, during his dummy, I saw him writing our names on the back of an envelope, and putting numbers after them. At my earliest opportunity I ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... draws its exquisite stuff from dowdy leaves, so youth finds beauty and mystery in stupid days. Carl went out unreservedly to practise with the football squad; he had a joy of martyrdom in tackling the dummy and peeling his nose on the frozen ground. He knew a sacred aspiration when Mr. Bjorken, the coach, a former University of Minnesota star, told him that he might actually "make" the team in a year or two; that he had twice as much chance as Ray Cowles, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... Oh, ma'am—anybody but Master Johnny, and I'd 'ave been a deaf an' dummy. Poor girl! She's not responsive, I daresay. Suppose I was to speak ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy



Words linked to "Dummy" :   dummy whist, boob, blank, silent person, figure, mannequin, simpleton, blank shell, make, dummy up, deaf-mute, deaf-and-dumb person, create, ventriloquist's dummy, mute, unreal, cartridge, baby's dummy, artificial, mannikin, manakin



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com