Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- interjection An
invocation to drawfools into acircle .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
A nonsense word from a song in William Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 5. It is defined by the singer, after the song, as "a Greek invocation, to draw fools into a circle" (even as his curious companions have formed a circle around him). As is noted in the Arden edition of the play, "Much ingenuity has been bestowed to find the origin and significance of what may be sheer nonsense...my personal favourite interpretation is that it comes from the Welsh dewch da mi = Come to me..."
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Examples
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a kind of ducdame to bring people of no very great sense into your circle.
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Nay, not so glum, ye moralists and satirists, philanthropists and preachers; link hands all -- _ducdame, ducdame!
Without Prejudice Israel Zangwill 1895
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II. v.56 (265,2) [Duc ad me] For _ducdame_ sir T. Hammer, very acutely and judiciously, reads _duc ad me_.
Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies Samuel Johnson 1746
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_ducdame_ to bring people of no very great sense into your circle.
Letters to Dead Authors Andrew Lang 1878
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