dumb adj.1
1. (US) boring, dull.
These Were Our Years (1959) 172: I don’t let any John get moldy on me. Soon as I see they’re heading for a dumb time I say ‘razzberry.’ And off your little sugar toddles. [Ibid.] 174: Say this is a dumb place. | ‘Portrait of a Flapper’ in
2. (US campus) unattractive.
Rampant Age 423: Say, ain’t that a dumb dress Miss Botts got on to-day? | ||
Lead With Your Left (1958) 1: The dumb lamp we had in the two-by-four ‘foyer’ was on. |
SE in slang uses
Based on SE dumb, stupid
In derivatives
(US) a fool.
L.A. Times 10 Jan. CC†/VI: Talking about reaching for a gag, Dumbski. | ||
Donnie Brasco [film script] You’re calling me a dumbski? You know who you’re talkin’ to? | ||
‘Gut Feeling’ at coldbloodedgames.typepad.com 8 May 🌐 A lotta jailhouse ink means a lot of fuck ups and I usually wouldna given a dumski like him the time of day. | ||
Joey Piss Pot 30: ‘[Q]uit hanging around with dumbskis think they’re in a fuckin’ movie’. |
In compounds
see dumb-ass n. (1)
see separate entries.
see dumb-ass adj.
see separate entries.
(UK juv./N.Z./US) a fool.
Newark Advocate (OH) 10 Oct. 15/5: The latter [team] aren’t controlled by dumbums who’d break up an infield to get a slightly spavined infielder. | ||
Dimboola (2000) 94: Drop dead, dumb-bum. | ||
Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 41/1: dumb-bum dolt; eg ‘C’mon, dumb-bum, concentrate and you might manage to hit the ball.’. | ||
OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 dumbum adj. person acting stupidly. | ||
Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988]. |
1. (US) a fool.
Twin Falls News (ID) 4 June 6/3: [I] let Alaine work on that dumb bunny of an Ab. | ||
N.Y. Tribune 21 Sept. 10/5: As we interpret the lingo of the younger Scott Fitzgerald set, a dumb bunny is a goof with a part-time bean. | ||
Dict. Amer. Sl. 16: dumb. Stupid. Hence, dumb-bell, dumb bunny. | ||
Strange Brother (1932) 254: Peggy, who was so often what June called a ‘dumb bunny’. | ||
High Sierra in Four Novels (1984) 316: I got tired of her; she was a dumb rabbit; so I give her the air. | ||
Decade 312: It stinks, this alki [...] The dumb bunnies will drink it. | ||
Set This House on Fire 374: Where do you think I learned them, you dumb bunny. | ||
I’m a Jack, All Right 10: There ought to be a law to protect the dumb bunnies from spivs like Thumper. | ||
Come Monday Morning 96: That big dumb bunny never did have no couth at all. | ||
Dict. of Invective (1991) 130: Dumb makes an excellent prefix or intensifier. For example: dumb-ass, dumbbell, dumb blonde, dumb bunny, dumb cluck, dumb Dora, dumb-dumb. | ||
(con. 1964–8) Cold Six Thousand 204: He came to Vegas like a dumb bunny, and moves like that will get him dropped. | ||
(con. 1962) Enchanters 351: You dumb bunnies dumped a kidnap suspect. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
Golden Boy II i: Get me [...] some fights with contenders, not with dumb-bunny club fighters. |
1. (orig. US) a fool.
Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN) 2 June 6/1: I have vainly sought to find the dumb cluck who invented the eating of soup rom the side of a spoon. | ||
AS VI:3 204: dumb cluck: unintelligent, not bright person. | ‘University of Missouri Sl.’ in||
Fabulous Clipjoint (1949) 30: This Bassett didn’t look like a detective, but he wasn’t a dumb cluck at all. | ||
(con. 1910s) Hoods (1953) 5: Hey, Noodles, did you hear the dumb cluck? | ||
Till Human Voices Wake Us 86: Great easy-going dumbclucks. | ||
Big Rumble 63: I’m not a dumb cluck like you. | ||
Plays: 3 (1994) Scene ii: He must be one right stupid dumb-cluck. | Morning After Optimism in||
(con. 1960s) Tripmaster Monkey 273: You dumb cluck. | ||
It’s Good to Be Alive 78: I thought you gave him the other dice, you dumb cluck! | ||
China Marine 11: On the downside I was young and in many ways a dumb cluck. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
Detroit Free Press (MI) 17 Sept. 8/2: ‘Anybody knows what those words [i.e. jazz slang] mean — anybody but a dumb cluck girl’. | ||
Till Human Voices Wake Us 169: Not that Jock was an ordinary dumbcluck union official. | ||
Beat Generation 126: One of these days, her dumb cluck ex-husband might see Artie and her. | ||
On the Reliability of the Old Testament 467: Tented kingdoms may be unknown to dumb-cluck socio-anthropologists, but they are solidly attested. |
3. used as v. to act stupidly.
Quad-City Times (Davenport, IA) 6 Apr. 2/1: She flopped on snappy comeback / Dumb-clucked on what to say. |
see dumbfuck n.
1. (also dumb Mabel) a pretty, but empty-headed woman, often a member of the chorus line; ; also attrib.
Baltimore Sun (MD) 20 Feb. 13/1: The new defender of the supposedly dumb dora bases his conclusions on a survey [etc]. | ||
Wash. Times 16 Apr. 47/1: If anyone should tell the flapper she was the latest development of feminism [...] she would [...] present one with a well simulated Dumb Dora look. | ||
Detective-Dragnet May 🌐 She’s one of these little blond babies [...] what do you think that dumb Mabel did. | ‘Flies on the Ceiling’ in||
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 561: Dorgan, who died in 1929, was the begetter of apple-sauce, twenty-three, skiddoo, ball-and-chain (for wife), cake-eater, dumb Dora, dumbbell (for stupid person), nobody home, and you said it. | ||
Father and Son 218: Bill says he loves me but that I’m a dumb Dora. | ||
I, Fatty 172: A Dumb Dora, some dizzy drunkette so prestoned you don’t even know if she’s alive. |
2. a stupid person.
Ring Nov. 10: dumb dora -- A stupid fellow. | in||
Negro Youth 106: [T]eachers usually set up some dumb-Dora or bum as the best liked and most popular individual. | ||
Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 227: Dora (Dumb Dora) and Dumbo or Dumbellina (from Disney’s cartoon elephant and dumbbell) are heard. | ||
Dict. of Invective (1991) 130: Dumb makes an excellent prefix or intensifier. For example: dumb-ass, dumbbell, dumb blonde, dumb bunny, dumb cluck, dumb Dora, dumb-dumb. |
3. attrib. use of sense 2.
Queens of Comedy 117: Private Benjamin showed the seamy, painful side of Dumb Dora femininity [...] She adopts a sexually compliant Dumb Dora persona. |
see separate entries.
(US) a fool.
Tiffin Wkly Trib. 1 July 3/3: Lewis Schlesigner, known as the ‘utta Percha Pen Man’, has been arrested [...] for swindling. he tried to come the ‘dumb Isaac’ on Mr J.F. Wooster. | ||
St Joseph Gaz. (MI) 22 Dec. 4/2: The prostrate law-breaker [...] playing the ‘dumb Isaac’ to perfection. | ||
Fort Wayne Jrnl-Gaz. (IN) 7 June 8/2: ‘Don’t try to come the dumb Isaac over me’. | ||
TAD Lex. (1993) 34: He had a line of bull that would make the book agent look like a dumb Isaac. | in Zwilling||
Dly Ardmoreite (OK) 20 Oct. 4/2: [headline] A Dumb Isaac. | ||
Leave it to Psmith (1993) 568: You’re the sort of dumb Isaac that couldn’t find a bass-drum in a telephone booth. | ||
Dict. of Invective (1991) 130: Dumb makes an excellent prefix or intensifier. For example: [...] dumb Isaac, dumb ox, and rumdum. |
(US) foolish, stupid; thus n. dumbnut a fool.
Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, SD) 17 Jan. 4/5: The dumb-nuts, the leftists, the soul-less communists, the alcoholics, the dope users, the hand-outer. | ||
Public Burning (1979) 170: Greenglass, by comparison, was just some dumbnuts YCL on-the-make Army kid. | ||
Bravo Burning 3: He asked for and got...straightleg dumb-nuts infantry [HDAS]. | ||
Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] Miller hears the ASIO dumbnuts whispering. | ‘Some Protection’ in
(US) a fool, also attrib.
Washington Tubbs II 29 June [synd. cartoon] Why, you dumb onion, she ordered you out of the house. | ||
Red Harvest (1965) 24: What kind of dumb onion do you take me for? | ||
Katzenjammer Kids 21 Sept. [synd. cartoon] As a couple of dumb onions dese two take der cake. | ||
Chicago Trib. 25 Nov. 16/2: After G.O.P victory there, Virginia need no longer call herself the dumb onion state. |
(US) a foolish (young) person.
Ogden Standard Examiner 12 Apr. 6/5: I got my glimmers on Tommie Smith. He had a dumb-otis with him. | ||
Them was the Good Old Days 90: Then we hooked a dumb-otis and scandal-walker for the yellow dimbox, and I blouse to the homehouse to dingle-dangle. |
see dumb bunny
see separate entries.
(US) (usu. milit.) a fool.
Fitchberg Sentinel (MA) 7 May 6/1: He’d see plebe cadet Foley [...] and chide him, ‘Hey Dumb Smack, what’re you doing’. | ||
(con. 1950s) | Tenderness 17: ‘Wipe that smile off your face, Dumb Smack!’ was an often repeated negative reinforcement [at West Point].||
🌐 If you know of a better deal elsewhere (I really doubt it), don’t be a dumbsmack -- go get it! | Environmental Systems Distributing
1. a fool.
Dly Trib. (Waisconsin Rapids, WI) 30 June 10/1: Being an obliging sort of dumb sock, Hank did as requested. | ||
AS V:3 238: Dumb sock: a person who is not very bright. ‘That farmer is a dumb sock.’. | ‘Colgate University Sl.’ in||
(con. 1920s) Studs Lonigan (1936) 294: Studs ran down, and pulled the dumbsock aside. | Young Manhood in
2. a Swede or any Scandinavian immigrant.
in DARE. |
(US) a fool.
(con. 1963) Lords of Discipline 129: Pop off, dumb squat. | ||
🌐 But anybody who can’t sustain a good lying pretense in that part of the world is a dumbsquat, worthy of contempt, the kind of dimwit who would pay a whole herd of camels for a short bag of stale dates. | Sierra Times 7 Oct.
(US campus) a fool.
Selma Times-Jrnl (AL) 22 Jan. 3/1: In fact, we actually had most grown-ups lumped into one large pigeon hole labeled dumb-wad. | ||
(con. 1963) Lords of Discipline 150: Clean your loathsome bodies, dumbwads. | ||
🌐 The main reason for buying them is because Steve is a total dwanky dumbwad who doesn’t know how to properly brush his teeth. | Intensity Journal 26 Feb.
(US) a fool, also attrib.
Eve. Star (Wash., DC) 23 Mar. 31/2: The manager wondered what sort of dumb-wit this other man was. | ||
Capital Times (Madison, WI) 4 June 24/2: It is a poor dumb-wit who knows no difference between a La Follette Progressive and a Blaine Progressive. | ||
Oakland Trib. (CA) 1 May Mag. & Fiction section 5/2: ‘Probably even you dumbwit men would recognise that’. | ||
in Pulps (1970) 105: Any dumbwit you drag to the altar will be going for a cleaning instead of a honeymoon. | ||
🌐 I have been in recruitment for 2 years and am not a ‘dumbwit’ as some of you like to think (I actually have a 1st class BSc Hons) but like yourselves struggled to find work in my field and ended up in recruitment. | I-Resign.com posting 25 Jul.
Based on SE dumb, mute
In compounds
see separate entry.
1. (orig. US) a fool, thus dumbheaded, foolish.
Seth’s Brother’s Wife 339: Over in Jay we wouldn’t elect sech a dumb-head to be a hog-reeve. | ||
South Wales Echo 10 Oct. 4/1: She must despise me [...] Such a dumb-head as I must seem to her. | ||
St Paul Dly Globe (MN) 28 Jan. 8/2: Did the Democrats select a weak, vain man, and a selfish dumbhead? | ||
Roscommon Messenger 16 Mar. 5/5: He criticised the action of some ‘dumb-heads’ who were influenced by the occupiers of land against allowing him to get sites for cottages. | ||
Bystander 27 Nov. 434/2: He was a dense, dumb-headed man, like all the rest of them. | ||
Willmar Tribune (St Paul, MN) 18 Mar. 3/5: Walter, you lazy dumbhead. | ||
Hendon & Finchley Times 19 July 8/4: Till the drum major said, / Please remember, dumbhead / That the time is toot-two, not forps-forps. | ||
Eve. World (NY) 28 July 10/3: [cartoon caption] That’s jes like th’ dumbhead: Grr! How I despise that man! | ||
Village 145: Walter was a dumbhead. | ||
Death Ship 248: Only dumb-heads and oxen heave coal. | ||
Dly Mirror 25 May 12/2: Now find an answer to that, you dumbheads. I think you’re backward in your history. | ||
Good Morning (London) 31 May 2/1: Editor: Did you get am interview with Lord Dumbhead? Reporter: Yes, but he had nothing to say. | ||
Augie March (1996) 35: You heard me, you dumbhead! | ||
Dly Mirror 16 Nov. 4/3: Too often our bosses are deadheads. dumbheads and blockheads. | ||
Scene (1996) 67: We gotta go somewhere, dumbhead! | ||
Cocktail Waitress 52: Spit it out, dumbhead. | ||
Aberdeen Eve. Exp. 14 Feb. 22/5: Leon Spinks [is] not exactly dumb-headed, but, unlike Ali, hot the kind ot man who would feel at ease at a White House cocktail party. | ||
Christine 47: Even a little nine-year-old dumbhead like me could see it was never going to be all right for Captain Beefheart again. | ||
Dict. of Invective (1991) 130: Dumb makes an excellent prefix or intensifier. For example: [...] dumbhead. | ||
Never Too Old a Victim 324: ‘What does one dumbhead know? Put on your shirt and tie and come with me.’ The not-so-dumbhead said, ‘If I told them to hire you, they would.’. | ||
Eve. Herald (Dublin) 10 June 38/1: This dreary, self-important documentary was full of dumb-headed generalisations like this. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
Labor World (Duluth, MN) 28 Oct. 1/3: The dumbhead voters of the Mississipppi Valley will now have a chance to study the beauties of capitalism. | ||
Hard-Boiled Detective (1977) 228: Of all the dumbhead plays you’ve made, that’s the worst. | ‘Leg Man’ in Ruhm||
Executioner (1973) 74: Spare me the dumbhead details. | ||
Sun. World (Dublin) 17 Sept. 8/5: Some dumbhead designer starts talking aabout the relaxed feeling. |
the vagina.
Bacchanalian Mag. 50: Original and selected Toasts and Sentiments [...] Roast meat for the speaking mouthand raw for the dumb. |
the vagina; thus work the dumb oracle, to have sexual intercourse.
Sl. and Its Analogues. | ||
Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 17: Argument, m. [...] 2. The female pudendum; ‘the dumb oracle’. |
the vagina.
Sl. and Its Analogues. | ||
Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 98: Double-six, m. The female pudendum; ‘the dumb-squint’. |
(US campus) the penis.
Campus Sl. Nov. 3: dumbstick – penis. From Ally McBeal: ‘Oh, cut him some slack; he’s got the dumb-stick handicap’. |
a venereal bubo in the groin.
, , | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
Lex. Balatronicum. | ||
Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
In phrases
(US) extremely stupid.
Sheboygan Press (WI) 29 Oct. 12/1: Dumb as a box rocks, the cattle brains of the public [...] reacted exactly as the media expected. | ||
Des Moines Trib. (IO) 4 June 6/3: Dean said that he and his wife, mary, ‘were dumb as a box of rocks’ about house-building. | ||
El Paso Times (TX) 31 May Tiempo 6/2: The cop on the case is dumb as a box of rocks. | ||
Wire ser. 2 ep. 1 [TV script] White boys, I love ’em. Dumb as a box of rocks. | ‘Ebb Tide’||
Swollen Red Sun 179: He thought about the big baby. Dumber than a bucket of screwdrivers. | ||
Globe-Gaz. (Mason City, IA) 9 June C1/1: At 18, my ,ife had just begun, and I was dumb as a box of rocks. |
Mike Fink 8/2: I’m as dumb as a dead nigger in a mud hole. |
see under oyster n.
(US) very stupid.
Boy from County Hell 115: ‘You think I’m gonna let them poison my son like they did my sister, you’re dumber than a box of cocks’. |
of a beggar, to pose as a mute in order to extract money.
‘The Cadger’s Ball’ in Musa Pedestris (1896) 148: Dick, wot ‘dumbs it’ round the nation, / Had all the jaw among the fair. |