dud
/dʌd
/informal
noun
1A thing that fails to work properly or is otherwise unsatisfactory or worthless: all three bombs were duds...
- There's really not a dud in the lot here as each show is well written and well intentioned from the outset.
- A bomb disposal expert from Catterick was called in and the bomb was found to be a dud filled with concrete.
- There are some duds, some poems that not only risk the ridiculous but also achieve it.
1.1An ineffectual person: a complete dud, incapable of even hitting the ball...
- She has been a complete dud in the deputy's position.
- I've just got this feeling that maybe he's a complete dud.
- Still, it's not as if he has been a complete dud when it comes to raising money.
Synonyms
failure, flop, let-down, disappointment;
British damp squib
informal washout, lemon, loser, no-hoper, non-starter, dead loss, dead duck, lead balloon, fail
North American informal clinker
2 (duds) Clothes: buy yourself some new duds...
- If travel isn't in your budget, maybe you'd like to sport some fancy new duds from Brown Sound Clothing.
- Organize a clothes drive and donate duds to a local shelter.
- Forget about dressing down; be one step ahead of your co-workers with these stylish duds that'll make you forget you're at work.
adjective
1Not working or meeting standards; faulty: a dud ignition switch...
- If someone discovers that they've been ripped off with excessive fees and charges 4 or 5 years down the track or they're in a dud product with a poor rate of return, it's very hard to unwind that product.
- Scottish consumers waste £12,000 in their lifetimes by signing up for dud products pushed on to them by banks and other financial institutions, according to a report.
- Since then Richard, from Bredbury, has installed - and ripped out again - four faulty kitchen sets after the furniture company continued to send him units from a manufacturer's dud batch.
Synonyms
defective, faulty, unsound, inoperative, broken, broken-down, not working, not in working order, not functioning, malfunctioning, failed
informal bust, busted, kaput, on its last legs, conked out, done for
British informal duff, knackered
British vulgar slang buggered
1.1Counterfeit: she was charged with issuing dud cheques...
- Samantha was eventually arrested by the police in Barstow, Nevada trying to cash a dud cheque she had been given in a third-rate casino in Vegas in 1978.
- Trading Standards officers have warned shoppers buying jewellery over the internet this Christmas that they could be at risk from online fraudsters passing off fakes and dud goods as the real thing.
- Most of the fraud was done by banking dud cheques and drawing on the funds before the cheques had cleared.
Synonyms
counterfeit, fraudulent, forged, fake, faked, false, bogus, spurious;
bad, invalid, worthless
informal phoney
verb [with object] Australian informal
Trick or swindle (someone): they became increasingly aware of their rights and how much they were being dudded...
- Two shonky financial advisers have dudded more than a thousand people out of their life savings.
- I drove home feeling that I had probably dudded myself out of $77.
- As they became increasingly aware of their rights and how much they were being dudded, they started to join the union.
Origin
Middle English (in the sense 'item of clothing'): of unknown origin.