Chapter Dull as a Fro to Dunciad of D by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Dumb-waiter A piece of dining-room furniture, fitted with shelves, to hold glasses, dishes, and plate. So called because it answers all the purposes of a waiter, and is not possessed of an insolent tongue; a lift for carrying food from a kitchen to the dining-room, etc.

Dummy In three-handed whist the exposed hand is called dummy.

Dummies (2 syl.). Empty bottles or drawers in a druggist's shop; wooden heads in a hairdresser's shop; lay figures in a tailor's shop; persons on the stage who appear before the lights, but have nothing to say. These all are dumb, actually or figuratively.

Dump A Brazilian copper coin, worth about 2 1/2d.; also a round flat lump of lead used on board ship for playing quoits and chuck-penny. Hence dumpy or dumpty (squat or small). An egg is called a humpty- dumpty in the nursery verses beginning with "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall," etc.

"Death saw two players playing cards,
But the game was not worth a dump."
Hood: Death's Ramble, stanza 14.

Dumps To be in the dumps. Out of spirits; in the "sullens." According to etymological fable, it is derived from Dumops, King of Egypt, who built a pyramid and died of melancholy. Gay's Third Pastoral is Wednesday, or the Dumps. (German, dumm, stupid, dull.)

"Why, how now, daughter Katharine? in your dumps?" - Shakespeare: Taming of the Shrew, ii. 1.

Dun One who importunes for payment of a bill (Anglo-Saxon, dunan, to din or clamour). The tradition is that it refers to Joe Dun, a famous bailiff of Lincoln in the reign of Henry VII. The British Apollo says he was so active and dexterous in collecting bad debts that when anyone became "slow to pay" the neighbours used to say to the creditors, "Dun him" (send Dun after him).

"An Universitie dunne ... is an inferior creditor of some ten shillings or downewards, contracted for horse- hire, or perchance drinke, too weake to be put in suite." - Bishop Earle: Microcosmographia (1601-1695).

   Squire Dun. The hangman between Richard Brandin and Jack Ketch.

"And presently a halter got,
Made of the best strong hempen teer;
And, ere a cat could lick his ear,
Had tied him up with as much art,
As Dun himself could do for 's heart."
Cotton: Virgil Travestied, book iv.

Dun Cow The dun cow of Dunsmore heath was a savage beast slain by Sir Guy, Earl of Warwick. A huge tusk, probably that of an elephant, is still shown at Harwich Castle as one of the horns of the dun-cow. (See Guy.)
   The fable is that this cow belonged to a giant, and was kept on Mitchell Fold (middle fold), Shropshire. Its milk was inexhaustible; but one day an old woman who had filled her pail, wanted to fill her sieve also. This so enraged the cow, that she broke loose from the fold and wandered to Dunsmore heath, where she was slain by Guy of Warwick.
    Isaac Taylor, in his Words and Places (p. 269), says the dun cow is a corruption of the Dena Gau or Danish settlement in the neighbourhood of Warwick. Gau, in German, means region, country. If this explanation is correct, the great achievement of Guy was a victory over the Danes, and taking from them their settlement near Warwick.

Dun in the Mire To draw Dun out of the mire. To lend a helping hand to one in distress. The allusion is to an English game, explained by Mr. Gifford in his edition of Ben Jonson, vii. 283. A log of wood is brought into a room. The log, called Dun, is supposed to have fallen into the mire, and the players are to pull him out. Every player does all he can to obstruct the others, and as often as possible the log is made to fall on someone's toes. Constant allusion is made to this game.

"Sires, what? Dun is in the mire." - Chaucer:
Prologue to Maunciples Tale.

"If thou art dun we'll draw thee from the mire."
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, i. 4.

"Well done, my masters, lend's your hands;
Draw Dun out of the ditch,
Draw, pull, helpe all. So, so; well done."
Duchesse of Suffolke (1631).

Dunce A dolt; a stupid person. The word is taken from Duns Scotus, the learned schoolman and great supporter of the immaculate conception. His followers were called Dunsers. Tyndal says, when they saw that their hair-splitting divinity was giving way to modern theology,