dud

See also: Appendix:Variations of "dud"

English

Etymology

From Middle English dudde (“cloak, mantle, kind of cloth; ragged clothing or cloth”), from Old English *dudda (attested only as personal name Dudda, part of modern English Dudley), akin to Old Norse dúði (“swaddling clothes”), Low German dudel. Possibly borrowed from the Old Norse word and related to dyja (“to shake, tremble”).

Pronunciation

• enPR: dŭd, IPA^(key): /dʌd/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌd

Noun

dud (plural duds)

1. (informal) A device or machine that is useless because it does not work properly or has failed to work, such as a bomb, or explosive projectile.
   • 2021 December 29, Drachinifel, 21:03 from the start, in The USN Pacific Submarine Campaign - The Dark Year (Dec'41 - Dec'42)‎^[1], archived from the original on 19 July 2022:

     The only amusing highlight was Gudgeon having managed to exploit U.S. codebreaking efforts to ambush and destroy the submarine I-173, albeit not for the lack of the Mark 14's trying to sabotage the effort, as the torpedo that had hit the sub had refused to detonate; it seemed, however, that the car-crash levels of kinetic energy involved in the dud simply ramming the sub had nonetheless done enough to fatally damage it.

2. (informal) A failure of any kind.
   • 2014 September 23, A teacher, “Choosing a primary school: a teacher's guide for parents”, in The Guardian:

     At the end of the day, the vast majority of primary schools are vibrant, friendly places and you may struggle to choose one because they all seem so great. Primary schools tend to have the feelgood factor. If you just aren't feeling it, this one's probably a dud.

   1. (informal) A loser; an unlucky person.
      • 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:

        "Now you can't fool me. Tom, I'm not one o' those duds that pay you a thick 'un for an hour in the dark."

   2. A lottery ticket that does not give a payout.
3. (obsolete, informal) Clothes, now always used in plural form duds.

Synonyms

• (losing lottery ticket): blank

Translations

broken or nonfunctional device that does not perform its intended function

• Albanian: please add this translation if you can
• Armenian: please add this translation if you can
• Belarusian: please add this translation if you can
• Catalan: fracàs (ca) m, pífia f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 瞎炮 (xiāpào) (unexploded ordnance), 啞炮／哑炮 (yǎpào) (unexploded ordnance), 啞彈／哑弹 (yǎdàn), 瞎彈／瞎弹 (xiādàn)

• Czech: zmetek (cs) m, šmejd (cs) m, nefunkční věc
• Danish: fuser c (unexploded ordnance), forsager c (malfunctioning detonator or cartridge), blindgænger c (unexploded ordnance)
• Dutch: blindganger (nl) (unexploded ordnance)
• Estonian: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: susi (fi), suutari (fi) (unexploded ordnance)
• French: munition non explosée (unexploded ordnance)
• Georgian: please add this translation if you can
• German: Blindgänger (de) m (unexploded ordnance), Versager (de) m (malfunctioning detonator or cartridge)
• Hungarian: please add this translation if you can
• Japanese: 不発弾 (ja) (ふはつだん, fuhatsudan) (unexploded ordnance)
• Latvian: please add this translation if you can
• Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can
• Polish: bubel (pl) m, fajans (pl) m, tandeta (pl) f
• Romanian: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: неразорва́вшийся снаря́д m (nerazorvávšijsja snarjád) (unexploded ordnance)
• Slovak: please add this translation if you can
• Swedish: blindgångare (sv) c
• Turkish: please add this translation if you can
• Ukrainian: please add this translation if you can

lottery ticket that does not give a payout

• Danish: nitte (da) c
• Dutch: niet (nl) m
• German: Niete (de) f
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: nite m

  Nynorsk: nite m

• Swedish: nit (sv) c, nitlott c

obsolete: clothes — see duds

loser — see loser

See also

• wet firecracker

Adjective

dud (not comparable) (superlative duddest)

1. Useless; failing; ineffective.
   • 2019, Max Hennessy, The Bright Blue Sky:

     […] they're flying in the duddest of dud weather to hold the Germans back.

Anagrams

• DDU, UDD

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈdut]
• Rhymes: -ut

Noun

dud

1. genitive plural of dudy

Maltese

Root
d-w-d
2 terms

Etymology

From Arabic دُود (dūd).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /duːt/

Noun

dud m (collective, singulative dudu or duda, plural dwied, paucal dudiet)

1. worms; worms as a species

Polish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dut/
• Rhymes: -ut
• Syllabification: dud

Noun

dud

1. genitive plural of dudy

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish طوت (tut, dut), from Persian توت (tut).

Noun

dud m (plural duzi)

1. mulberry (tree)

Declension

Declension of dud

	singular		plural
	indefinite articulation	definite articulation	indefinite articulation	definite articulation
nominative/accusative	(un) dud	dudul	(niște) duzi	duzii
genitive/dative	(unui) dud	dudului	(unor) duzi	duzilor
vocative	dudule		duzilor

Derived terms

• dudă

Serbo-Croatian

Etymology

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish طوت (tut, dut), from Persian توت (tut).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dûd/

Noun

dȕd m (Cyrillic spelling ду̏д)

1. mulberry (fruit)

   Synonym: mȗrva

Declension

Declension of dud

	singular	plural
nominative	dud	dudovi
genitive	duda	dudova
dative	dudu	dudovima
accusative	dud	dudove
vocative	dude	dudovi
locative	dudu	dudovima
instrumental	dudom	dudovima

Welsh

Noun

dud

1. Soft mutation of tud.

Mutation

Welsh mutation
radical	soft	nasal	aspirate
tud	dud	nhud	thud
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.