tom-tom

See also: tomtom, TomTom, and Appendix:Variations of "tom"

English

Etymology

Onomatopoeic, with reduplication.

Noun

tom-tom (plural tom-toms)

  1. A small joined pair of drums, beaten with the hands.
    • 1928 February, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 11, number 2, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, pages 159–178 and 287:
      It was voodoo, apparently, but voodoo of a more terrible sort than they had ever known; and some of their women and children had disappeared since the malevolent tom-tom had begun its incessant beating far within the black haunted woods where no dweller ventured.
    • 1949 June 26, Ann Hightower, “If Paris Is Can-Can, New York Is Tom-Tom”, in The New York Times‎[1], →ISSN, page 167:
      Many visitors to France will go back to the States after a three months' fling of night spots and sight-seeing without remarking that can-can girls and champagne play about the same part in French life today as the tom-tom and totem pole in American life.
  2. (usually as a pair) Any cylindrical drum, with no snare; part of a drum kit.
  3. Alternative form of tam-tam (“a kind of flat gong”).

Verb

tom-tom (third-person singular simple present tom-toms, present participle tom-tomming, simple past and past participle tom-tommed)

  1. To play the tom-tom (pair of drums).

Anagrams

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