tom-tom

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

English

Etymology

From Hindi टमटम (ṭamṭam, “the sound of a drum”), and similar terms in related or nearby languages (as Punjabi ਟਮ ਟਮ (ṭam ṭam), Gujarati ટમટમ (ṭamṭam), Bengali টমটম (ṭomṭom), Sinhalese ටම් ටම් (ṭam ṭam), Tamil தம் தம் (tam tam), Malayalam തം തം (taṁ taṁ), Tibetan ཐོམ ཐོམ (thom thom)); ultimately of onomatopoeic origin, with reduplication. Early evidence is from Anglo-Indian sources.

Noun

tom-tom (plural tom-toms)

A small drum, often one of a joined pair, beaten with the hands, frequently associated with tribal cultures.
- 1818 September 5, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, page 3, column 1:
  [T]he Rattle Rale had got information that a party was coming from Badula to look for Hadje, three days before, and had assembled the Country by beat of tom tom, and that those who had conducted Hadje to the stranger had that morning returned: he spoke of the stranger as a 'Deyo' (a God).
- 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 70:
  The passage would have been agreeable enough but for the dreadful "tom-toms," or wooden drums, which are beaten incessantly while the men are rowing. Two men were engaged constantly at them, making a fearful din the whole voyage.
- 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.
(usually as a pair) Any cylindrical drum, with no snare; part of a drum kit.
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)

To play the tom-toms.

Anagrams

motmot