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.

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

• motmot