Chapter Dudman and Ramhead to Duli'a of D by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Dudman and Ramhead to Duli'a

Dudman and Ramhead When Dudman and Ramhead meet. Never. Dudman and Ramhead (now spelt Ramehead) are two forelands on the Cornish coast, about twenty miles asunder. (See Never.)

"Make yourself scarce! depart! vanish! or we'll have you summoned before the mayor of Halgaver, and that before Dudman and Ramhead meet." - Scott: Kenilworth, iv.

Duds Old clothes, tattered garments (Gaelic, dud, a rag; Dutch, tod; Italian, tozzi). A dudder or dudsman is a scarecrow, or man of straw dressed in cast off garments to fray birds; also a pedlar who sells duds or gown-pieces. (Compare the Greek duo, to put on [clothes]; Latin, in-duo, to clothe.)

Dudu A pensive maiden of seventeen, "who never thought about herself at all." (Byron: Don Juan, vi. vii.)

Duende (3 syl.). A Spanish goblin or house-spirit. Calderon has a comedy called La Dama Duenda. (See Fairy.)

Duenna [Lady ]. The female of don. The Spanish don is derived from the Latin dominus =a lord, a master. A duenna is the chief lady-in-waiting on the Queen of Spain; but in common parlance it means a lady who is half companion and half governess, in charge of the younger female members of a nobleman's or gentleman's family in Portugal or Spain.

"There is no duenna so rigidly prudent and inexorably decorous as a superannuated coquette."- W. Irving: Sketch-Book (Spectre Bridegroom).

Duergar (2 syl.). Dwarfs who dwell in rocks and hills; noted for their strength, subtilty, magical powers, and skill in metallurgy. They are the personification of the subterranean powers of nature. According to the Gotho-German myth, the duergar were first maggots in Ymir's flesh, but afterwards assumed the likeness of men. The first duergar was Modsogner, the next Dyrin. N.B. - The Giant Ymir is Chaos. (See Heldenbuch.)

Duessa (Double-mind or False-faith). Daughter of Falsehood and Shame, who assumes divers disguises to beguile the Red Cross Knight. At one time she takes the name of Fidessa, and entices the knight into the Palace of Pride (Lucifera). The knight having left the palace, is overtaken by Duessa, and drinks of an enchanted fountain, which paralyses him, in which state he is taken captive by the giant Orgoglio. Prince Arthur slays the giant and rescues the knight; Duessa, being stripped of her gorgeous disguise, is found to be a hideous hag, and flees into the wilderness for concealment. She appears again in book ii. (Spenser: Faërie Queene, book i. 2-7; v. 9.)

Dufarge Jacques and Madame Dufarge are the presiding genii of the Faubourg St. Antoine, and chief instigators of many of the crimes committed by the Red Republicans in Dickens's Tale of Two Cities.

Duffer (A) now means a person easily bamboozled, one of slow wit; but originally it meant one who cheated or bamboozled. To duff =to cheat. Persons who sell inferior goods as "great bargains," under the pretence of their being smuggled, are duffers; so are hawkers generally. At the close of the eighteenth century passers of bad money were so called. Now the word is applied to persons taken in, and by artists to inferior pictures.

"Robinson a thorough duffer is."
Alexander Smith: Summer Idyll.

Duglas the scene of four Arthurian battles. It is a river which falls into the Ribble. Mr. Whittaker says, "six cwt. of horse-shoes were taken up from a space of ground near the spot during the formation of a canal."

Duke The Great Duke. The Duke of Wellington, called "the Iron Duke." (1769-1852.)

Duke Coombe William Coombe, author of Dr. Syntax, The Devil upon Two Sticks, etc., who in the days of his prosperity was noted for the splendour of his dress, the profusion of his table, and the magnificence of his deportment. Having spent all his money he turned author, but passed the last fifteen years of his life in the King's Bench. (1743-1823.)

Duke Ernest (See Ernest. )