How to Use dummy in a Sentence

dummy

1 of 3 noun
  • The bomb was just a dummy.
  • She loves you, you dummy.
  • They practiced CPR on a dummy.
  • Come hatch-time, scientists will swap out the dummies, and Mom, ideally, will be alert to the imminent arrival of a chick.
    Claire Voon, Smithsonian, 13 Apr. 2017
  • The seatbelt was not tight enough, the institute found, allowing the crash test dummy’s torso to be thrown so far forward that its head hit the steering wheel through the airbag.
    Cheryl Jensen, New York Times, 1 Feb. 2017
  • Jim went out resembling something like a hero, fighting some dummy who tried to steal a handful of comic books.
    David Frese, kansascity.com, 12 May 2017
  • The center has trained 1,434 people, using an empty syringe and a plastic blue dummy.
    Jennifer Brown, The Denver Post, 28 Apr. 2017
  • At the end of the segment Colbert assaulted a dummy dressed like a member of the audience after being asked a question.
    Lorena O'Neil, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 May 2017
  • Nikki and Mr. Wrench happen upon an ominous hanging dummy and an ax.
    Zane Moses, baltimoresun.com, 8 June 2017
  • For more than three hours, dozens of speakers spoke of gratitude for or grievance with the federal health law — showing how the bill, despite its wonky bones, has become an all-purpose dummy for the bigger health care fight.
    John Ingold, The Denver Post, 7 Feb. 2017
  • Sure, cops and firefighters trained for it just in case, but rescuing plastic dummies in pretend scenarios didn’t feel real.
    Caitlin Doornbos, OrlandoSentinel.com, 5 June 2017
  • The company also created a Radcliffe dummy for a social campaign.
    Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 28 Feb. 2017
  • One of his pieces resembles a ventriloquist dummy dressed in newsprint; other works look like totems from civilizations that never existed.
    Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 28 May 2017
  • Pharmaceutical companies test drugs on them, and automakers employ them as crash-test dummies.
    National Geographic, 29 July 2016
  • The bomb was just a dummy.
  • She loves you, you dummy.
  • They practiced CPR on a dummy.
  • Come hatch-time, scientists will swap out the dummies, and Mom, ideally, will be alert to the imminent arrival of a chick.
    Claire Voon, Smithsonian, 13 Apr. 2017
  • The seatbelt was not tight enough, the institute found, allowing the crash test dummy’s torso to be thrown so far forward that its head hit the steering wheel through the airbag.
    Cheryl Jensen, New York Times, 1 Feb. 2017
  • Jim went out resembling something like a hero, fighting some dummy who tried to steal a handful of comic books.
    David Frese, kansascity.com, 12 May 2017
  • The center has trained 1,434 people, using an empty syringe and a plastic blue dummy.
    Jennifer Brown, The Denver Post, 28 Apr. 2017
  • At the end of the segment Colbert assaulted a dummy dressed like a member of the audience after being asked a question.
    Lorena O'Neil, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 May 2017
  • Nikki and Mr. Wrench happen upon an ominous hanging dummy and an ax.
    Zane Moses, baltimoresun.com, 8 June 2017
  • For more than three hours, dozens of speakers spoke of gratitude for or grievance with the federal health law — showing how the bill, despite its wonky bones, has become an all-purpose dummy for the bigger health care fight.
    John Ingold, The Denver Post, 7 Feb. 2017
  • Sure, cops and firefighters trained for it just in case, but rescuing plastic dummies in pretend scenarios didn’t feel real.
    Caitlin Doornbos, OrlandoSentinel.com, 5 June 2017
  • The company also created a Radcliffe dummy for a social campaign.
    Vanityfair.com, VanityFair.com, 28 Feb. 2017
  • One of his pieces resembles a ventriloquist dummy dressed in newsprint; other works look like totems from civilizations that never existed.
    Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 28 May 2017
  • Pharmaceutical companies test drugs on them, and automakers employ them as crash-test dummies.
    National Geographic, 29 July 2016
  • The bomb was just a dummy.
  • She loves you, you dummy.
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dummy

2 of 3 adjective
  • They took apart a dummy bomb.
  • South ruffs in dummy and ruffs a club with the queen of trumps.
    Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 6 Feb. 2024
  • The images are of dummy units, so there’s no screen to see here.
    David Phelan, Forbes, 10 Apr. 2021
  • His money was safe; the hack had sent him to a dummy Web site.
    Zach Helfand, The New Yorker, 25 Sep. 2023
  • That caused the blank to propel the dummy round out of the barrel, striking Lee.
    Vulture, 21 Dec. 2022
  • Long Colt dummy rounds had arrived on the set that day.
    Los Angeles Times, 20 Nov. 2021
  • Then they’ll be tracked for a year to see whether the vaccine works better than the dummy shots.
    Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2021
  • But the gun contained dummy rounds, and at least one lead bullet.
    Meg James, Los Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2022
  • When the cannon fired, in the pups plunged, struggling adorably to return the dummy fowl to their owners.
    Chloe Schama, Vogue, 16 Dec. 2021
  • Two-thirds received two doses of the vaccine, three weeks apart, and the rest got dummy shots.
    Linda A. Johnson, Anchorage Daily News, 14 June 2021
  • About half took the antidepressant at home for 10 days, the rest got dummy pills.
    NBC News, 27 Oct. 2021
  • So did 28% of those in the group given a dummy injection.
    The Economist, 15 Mar. 2021
  • The second time, it was loaded with both dummy rounds and a live bullet.
    Kerry Breen, CBS News, 6 Mar. 2024
  • Her job was to look at the ammunition and put in the dummy round or the blank round, and there wasn’t supposed to be any live rounds on the set.
    Tina Burnside, CNN, 14 June 2023
  • Never in a million years did Hannah think that live rounds could have been in the 'dummy' Round box.
    Benjamin Vanhoose, PEOPLE.com, 2 Dec. 2021
  • To their surprise, several sharks ignored the swans and swam straight for the dummy bales.
    Jack Tamisiea, Scientific American, 26 July 2023
  • Using a laser to guide dummy bombs, the drone was able to strike a target the size of a picnic blanket from five miles away.
    The New Yorker, 9 May 2022
  • In their place were dummy heads made of plaster, flesh-tone paint and real human hair, the FBI said.
    Christine Pelisek, PEOPLE.com, 21 June 2022
  • My 11-year-old twins pummel each other with terms like scrub, dummy and stupe (for stupid).
    Amy Paturel, Washington Post, 15 Mar. 2023
  • Back on the boat, the team dropped dummy bales of cocaine into the water next to fake swans to see which object the sharks preferred.
    Jack Tamisiea, Scientific American, 26 July 2023
  • The training event – including a 165-pound dummy drag and a sprint to a 6-foot wall climb – was a vital step for Ms. Rivera.
    Cathi Douglas, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Aug. 2023
  • Five live rounds mixed in with dummy rounds were found on set following the shooting.
    Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter, 6 Mar. 2024
  • Everyone will be watching from the lodge to see each dummy soar!
    Naomi Stock, Anchorage Daily News, 7 Apr. 2022
  • One was in an ammunition box with a bunch of dummy rounds.
    Gene Maddaus, Variety, 28 Apr. 2022
  • That compares to about a third of youngsters given the dummy patches.
    Lauren Neergaard, The Enquirer, 11 May 2023
  • Ford will also make some small tweaks for the 2024 model year, such as removing a dummy charge port on the front.
    Emily Dreibelbis, PCMAG, 24 Aug. 2023
  • The test photos showed the body of the child-sized dummy careening grotesquely outside the protection of the seat belt.
    Patricia Callahan, ProPublica, 15 July 2021
  • The report also found that there were four different kinds of dummy rounds on set.
    Gene Maddaus, Variety, 15 Aug. 2023
  • The staffer used the dummy Pages to deliver fake likes to Hernández’s posts, the digital equivalent of bussing in a fake crowd for a speech.
    Robert Hackett, Fortune, 13 Apr. 2021
  • The prosecution has argued that Gutierrez Reed brought that box to the set and failed to distinguish between the dummy rounds and the live rounds.
    Gene Maddaus, Variety, 23 Feb. 2024
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dummy

3 of 3 verb
  • The easiest scenario to dummy out is the one in which all the teams in question go 4-4.
    Jeff Nowak, NOLA.com, 3 Aug. 2020
  • West threw a heart — another chance gone — and dummy won.
    Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 19 Sep. 2019
  • In addition to blank rounds, dummy rounds sometimes are used on set.
    Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 22 Oct. 2021
  • East took the ace and returned a heart, and declarer won and next led a club to dummy to return a trump, finessing with his jack.
    Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 20 Sep. 2019
  • Spurs came even closer in the 58th minute when Son cut inside from the right hand side this time, dummied his way past two Everton defenders and smashed the ball against the base of the post.
    SI.com, 13 Jan. 2018
  • At the end of the second half, Riyad Mahrez shaped the ball onto his right foot, dummied inside and finished beautifully to seal all three points for Leicester.
    SI.com, 9 May 2018
  • But, as MacRumors points out, dummy units that appear this late in the game are usually accurate.
    Chris Smith, BGR, 13 July 2021
  • From a mask that can’t be removed once donned to a horror theme park, killer camera, werewolf and dummy that comes to life, spooky adventures abound for ages 8 and older.
    Kathleen Christiansen, chicagotribune.com, 29 Sep. 2020
  • Gerso Fernandes elected to dummy the ball, setting up Gutierrez to rip the game-winner.
    Sam McDowell, kansascity, 10 Mar. 2018
  • Mike Tristano, a veteran armorer, or movie weapons specialist, was alarmed to hear that live rounds were mixed in with blanks and dummy rounds.
    Anchorage Daily News, 27 Oct. 2021
  • After forcing defenses to account for the toss, the Saints often come back to a similar formation later in the game but dummy the action.
    Jeff Nowak, NOLA.com, 9 Sep. 2020
  • The tragedy triggered an industry call for tighter safety standards on-set, including eliminating the use of real guns and dummy rounds of any kind.
    Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 19 Nov. 2021
  • Pro Max dummy hands-on video teasing the significant camera upgrades coming to this year’s Pro models.
    Chris Smith, BGR, 8 Aug. 2022
  • With digital twins predicting patient response, there will be no need for placebos or dummy drugs.
    Ganes Kesari, Forbes, 29 Sep. 2021
  • Baldwin said accidental discharges of blanks or dummy rounds on film and television sets are common.
    Lucien Bruggeman, ABC News, 2 Dec. 2021
  • The Thanksgiving practice usually concludes with Senior Tackle, when each senior addresses the team and then hits a blocking sled or tackling dummy one final time.
    Alan Blinder, New York Times, 25 Nov. 2020
  • Pfizer's Data and Safety Monitoring Board -- an outside team of experts who watch the trial with a neutral eye -- unblinded the data and saw that more than 90% of those cases were in people who had gotten placebo, or dummy shots.
    Maggie Fox, CNN, 9 Nov. 2020
  • After a bit of 3D modeling, Gens constructed his moose crash test dummy out of 116 rubber plates augmented with various steel parts to hold everything together.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 15 Sep. 2022
  • Gens decided to build a viable moose crash test dummy that car manufacturers could use in their safety R&D, partnering with Saab in Trollhättan, which supplied two test vehicles for crash test purposes.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 15 Sep. 2022
  • To gain regulatory approval, a drug is normally tested in costly large-scale trials encompassing a large number of people — with about half getting a placebo, or dummy pill — to prove the treatment actually works.
    Discover Staff, Discover Magazine, 16 Feb. 2014
  • Earlier this year, the company successfully tested the methodology with a stage 1 mass simulator, or dummy booster.
    Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 27 Apr. 2022
  • Tehran soon blocked access to the Starlink website, and dummy activation links containing malware were planted in the Iranian Twittersphere in an apparent attempt to lure anti-government protesters.
    Omid Khazani and Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 28 Sep. 2022
  • The easiest scenario to dummy out is the one in which all the teams in question go 4-4.
    Jeff Nowak, NOLA.com, 3 Aug. 2020
  • West threw a heart — another chance gone — and dummy won.
    Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 19 Sep. 2019
  • In addition to blank rounds, dummy rounds sometimes are used on set.
    Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times, 22 Oct. 2021
  • East took the ace and returned a heart, and declarer won and next led a club to dummy to return a trump, finessing with his jack.
    Frank Stewart, The Mercury News, 20 Sep. 2019
  • Spurs came even closer in the 58th minute when Son cut inside from the right hand side this time, dummied his way past two Everton defenders and smashed the ball against the base of the post.
    SI.com, 13 Jan. 2018
  • At the end of the second half, Riyad Mahrez shaped the ball onto his right foot, dummied inside and finished beautifully to seal all three points for Leicester.
    SI.com, 9 May 2018
  • But, as MacRumors points out, dummy units that appear this late in the game are usually accurate.
    Chris Smith, BGR, 13 July 2021
  • From a mask that can’t be removed once donned to a horror theme park, killer camera, werewolf and dummy that comes to life, spooky adventures abound for ages 8 and older.
    Kathleen Christiansen, chicagotribune.com, 29 Sep. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dummy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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