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Duffer vs Dummy - What's the difference?

duffer | dummy |

As nouns the difference between duffer and dummy

is that duffer is (male) dove, cock pigeon while dummy is a silent person; a person who does not talk.

As a verb dummy is

to make a mock-up or prototype version of something, without some or all off its intended functionality.

duffer

English

Adjective

(head)
  • (duff)

    • Noun

    (en noun)
  • (informal) An incompetent or clumsy person.
  • *1899 ,
  • *:Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.
  • (sports) A player having little skill, especially a golfer who duffs.
  • (archaic) A pedlar or hawker, especially one selling cheap or substandard goods.
  • (archaic) Cheap or substandard goods sold by a duffer .
  • A cow that does not produce milk.
  • * 1908 , Proceedings of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago , Volume 8, page 116,
    • We have some good cows in this State, but, unfortunately, we have too many duffer cows that are not only being fed and milked at a loss hut are eating up a portion of the profit of the good cow which is being milked alongside them.
  • * 1934''', Victorian Department of Agriculture, ''Journal of Agriculture , Volume 32, page 293,
    • The truth is that cattlemen love a typical cow for her beauty and symmetry of form ; but every herd-testing dairyman knows that an ugly animal may be a good producer, while many a beautiful cow is a duffer .
  • (Australia, dated) A cattle thief; one who alters the brands of cattle.
  • * 2004 , Deborah Bird Rose, Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation , page 112,
    • Judy was an associate (‘stud’) of a Whitefella cattle duffer named Brigalow Bill (aka WJJ Ward).
  • * 2010 , Evan McHugh, The Drovers
    • In the mid-1860s a duffer' named James Harnell, who went by the nickname Narran Jim, had taken stock he?d stolen from the district around Culgoa and Narran rivers across Queensland to the Cooper.An alert Bulloo Downs stockman contacted the police, and when Police Inspector Fitzgerald and eight Aboriginal troopers tracked Narran Jim and surrounded him while he was sleeping, the cattle ' duffer woke to find himself looking down the barrel of Fitzgerald?s revolver and seven years in jail.
  • * 2011 , Clancy Tucker, Gunnedah Hero , unnumbered page,
    • The cattle duffer ?s escape would have been impeded by those young ones. Calves can be unruly unless you move them carefully in the company of their mothers.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Anagrams

    *

    dummy

    English

    Noun

    (dummies)
  • A silent person; a person who does not talk.
  • An unintelligent person.
    • Don't be such a dummy !
  • A figure of a person or animal used by a ventriloquist; a puppet.
  • Something constructed with the size and form of a human, to be used in place of a person.
    • To understand the effects of the accident, we dropped a dummy from the rooftop.
  • A deliberately nonfunctional device or tool used in place of a functional one.
    • The hammer and drill in the display are dummies .
  • (AU, UK, NZ) A "dummy teat"; a plastic or rubber teat used to soothe or comfort a baby; a pacifier.
    • The baby wants her dummy .
  • * 2006 , Tizzie Hall, Save Our Sleep: A Parents? Guide Towards Happy, Sleeping Babies from Birth to Two Years , MacMillan 2009, page 200,
    • Then on the fifth day, at the first sleep of the day, remove the dummy' and follow my settling guide for your baby?s age. You should throw all her ' dummies in the bin to ensure you are not tempted to use them again – even outside sleep times.
  • * 2008 , Bern, Bern's Fairy Tales , page 15,
    • No Fairy baby has ever been seen to suck its thumb or to use a dummy .
  • * 2011 , Simone Cave, Caroline Fertleman, Baby to Toddler Month by Month , page 85,
    • We?ve found that going cold turkey works best – you check that your baby isn't ill or teething, then throw all dummies' away. When your baby cries for her ' dummy , you can look her in the eye and say, ‘It?s gone,’ and really mean it.
  • (card games, chiefly, bridge) A player whose hand is shown and is to be played from by another player.
  • (UK) A bodily gesture meant to fool an opposing player in sport; a feint.
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2011 , date=January 12 , author=Saj Chowdhury , title=Liverpool 2 - 1 Liverpool , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=Raul Meireles was the victim of the home side's hustling on this occasion giving the ball away to the impressive David Vaughan who slipped in Taylor-Fletcher. The striker sold Daniel Agger with the best dummy of the night before placing his shot past keeper Pepe Reina.}}
  • (linguistics) A word serving only to make a construction grammatical.
    • The pronoun "it" in "It's a mystery why this happened" is a dummy .
  • (programming) An unused parameter or value.
    • If flag1 is false, the other parameters are dummies .

    Synonyms

    * (a thing in the form of a person) mannequin, marionette * (plastic teat) pacifier (US), soother (Canada)

    Derived terms

    * dummy bid * dummy bidder

    Related terms

    * dumb

    See also

    * dud * fake * feint

    External links

    * http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002594.php

    Verb

  • To make a mock-up or prototype version of something, without some or all off its intended functionality.
    • The carpenters dummied some props for the rehearsals.
  • To feint
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2011 , date=February 1 , author=Mandeep Sanghera , title=Man Utd 3 - 1 Aston Villa , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=The more glamorous qualities usually associated with him are skill and pace and he used those to race on to a ball across him and dummy a defender before having a right-foot shot saved. }}
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2011 , date=January 15 , author=Kevin Darling , title=West Ham 0 - 3 Arsenal , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=For the first, the 30-year-old allowed Walcott space on the right to send in a pass that was expertly dummied by Samir Nasri, allowing Van Persie to swivel and smash right-footed past Robert Green. }}

    Derived terms

    * dummy out * dummy up