dummy

1. (dated) A silent person; a person who does not talk.Examples: "The man's name […] was engraved in the centre, and beneath this, written in ink with the same elaborate precision as the engraving, there was a brief message. I am a deaf-mute, but I read the lips and understand what is said to me. Please do not shout. […] Singer looked very carefully at his lips when he spoke—he had noticed that before. But a dummy!"Synonyms: dumbydated

2. (African-American Vernacular, Baltimore, slang) A term of address.Examples: "Hey dummy, what's good wit chu?"Synonyms: dude, broslang

3. (Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland) A pacifier; a plastic or rubber teat used to soothe or comfort a baby.Examples: "The baby wants her dummy."; "Then on the fifth day, at the first sleep of the day, remove the dummy and follow my settling guide for your baby′s age. You should throw all her dummies in the bin to ensure you are not tempted to use them again – even outside sleep times."; "No Fairy baby has ever been seen to suck its thumb or to use a dummy."Synonyms: binky, bink, bo-bo, comforter, dodie, dummy, nookie, paciAustraliaIrelandNew-ZealandUK

4. (card games, chiefly bridge) A player whose hand is shown and is to be played from by another player.

5. (linguistics) A word serving only to make a construction grammatical.Examples: "The pronoun "it" in "It's a mystery why this happened" is a dummy."

6. (programming) An unused parameter or value.Examples: "If flag1 is false, the other parameters are dummies."