noun
dada
DAH-dah
noun
1
An early childhood word for father.
"The baby pointed at the door and said "dada!" when he heard the car pull in."
2
An early 20th-century art and literary movement that rejected logic and tradition in favor of absurdity and provocation, born partly out of disgust at the First World War.
"Dada artists pasted together everyday objects to mock what they saw as a senseless, self-destructive society."
"The exhibition traced how Dada influenced later surrealist art."
How to Use Dada
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishEither a toddler's word for "dad," or the anti-art art movement from around World War I.
Word Forms
dadas plural
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The baby pointed at the door and said "_____!" when he heard the car pull in.
Etymology
The art-movement sense is often said to come from the French word for "hobby-horse," reportedly picked at random from a dictionary in 1916 precisely because it was silly and meant nothing serious; the baby-talk sense simply imitates an infant's first babbled sounds.