Other forms: dummies
A dummy is the rubber teat given to a baby to suck. Give him his dummy, lost the dummy, dummy dependency.
This is the British word; American English says pacifier. Spit the dummy is an Australian phrase meaning to lose your temper like a toddler. A dummy is also a model of a human body — a shop dummy, a crash test dummy — and a fake object used in place of a real one: a dummy camera, a dummy run. In sport, to sell a dummy is to fake a pass. Note that dummy is also an old and offensive word for somebody who cannot speak.
1noundummyA rubber teat given to a baby to suck.
“The dummy was on the floor again within about a minute.”
synonyms: pacifier
2nounmodelA model of a human body.
“The window dummy had been in the same coat for a year.”
3nounfakeA fake object used in place of a real one.
“Two of the cameras are dummies and everybody knows which.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
dummy is a substitute object.
Also accepted in games: pacifier
Dummy comes from dumb in its older sense of unable to speak — a dummy was a silent figure. Every modern sense keeps the silence: the shop model, the fake camera and the baby's teat all stand in for something without saying anything.
From dumb + -y. Pacifier sense from dummy teat where dummy is in the sense of a nonfunctional replica.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA