name, noun ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Father, dad. childish
2. 2
   Alternative letter-case form of Dada (“cultural movement”). alt-of, uncountable
3. 3
   A cultural movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland during and as a reaction to World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920, which primarily involved visual arts, literature (mainly poetry), theatre, and graphic design, and was characterized by deliberate irrationality, disillusionment, cynicism, nihilism, randomness, and rejection of the prevailing standards in art. uncountable

   "Ironically enough, it was the anti-war stirrings of Dada that bore out its most immediate influence, first in Switzerland and then post-war Berlin."

4. 4
   a nihilistic art movement (especially in painting) that flourished in Europe early in the 20th century; based on irrationality and negation of the accepted laws of beauty wordnet
5. 5
   an informal term for a father; probably derived from baby talk wordnet

Proper Noun

1. 1
   Initialism of Defense Against the Dark Arts. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism

Synonyms

All synonyms

daddaddadaismdaddyfatherold man

Example

More examples

""I'm looking for a song name." "How does it go?" "It goes like da dada da da.""

Etymology

Etymology 1

Imitative of a child's first syllables; see dad.

Etymology 2

From French dada (literally “hobby horse”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.