Crossword clues for dingbat
dingbat
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1838, American English, some kind of alcoholic drink, of unknown origin. One of that class of words (such as dingus, doohickey, gadget, gizmo, thingumabob) which are conjured up to supply names for items whose proper names are unknown or not recollected. Used at various periods for "money," "a professional tramp," "a muffin," "a typographical ornament," "male genitalia," "a Chinese," "an Italian," "a woman who is neither your sister nor your mother," and "a foolish person in authority." Popularized in sense of "foolish person" by U.S. TV show "All in the Family" (1971-79), though this usage dates from 1905.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context informal English) A silly, crazy or stupid person. 2 (context typography English) A special ornamental typographical symbol, such as a bullet, an arrow, a pointing hand etc. 3 (context architecture English) An architectural style of apartment building, where the second storey overhangs an area for parking cars.
WordNet
n. a silly empty-headed person; "you would be a dingbat even to try it"; "yet here he was with an upper class dingbat who just happened to be married to his sister"
Wikipedia
A dingbat, sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character, is an ornament, character, or spacer used in typesetting, often employed for the creation of box frames. The term continues to be used in the computer industry to describe fonts that have symbols and shapes in the positions designated for alphabetical or numeric characters.
Examples of characters included in Unicode ( ITC Zapf Dingbats series 100 and others):
✁
✂
✃
✄
☎
✆
✇
✈
✉
☛
☞
✌
✍
✎
✏
✐
✑
✒
✓
✔
✕
✖
✗
✘
✙
✚
✛
✜
✝
✞
✟
✠
✡
✢
✣
✤
✥
✦
✧
★
✩
✪
✫
✬
✭
✮
✯
✰
✱
✲
✳
✴
✵
✶
✷
✸
✹
✺
✻
✼
✽
✾
✿
❀
❁
❂
❃
❄
❅
❆
❇
❈
❉
❊
❋
●
❍
■
❏
☺
☻
♥
♦
♣
♠
•
◘
○
❐
❑
❒
▲
▼
◆
❖
◗
❘
❙
❚
❛
❜
❝
❞
The advent of Unicode and the universal character set it provides allowed commonly used dingbats to be given their own character codes. Although fonts claiming Unicode coverage will contain glyphs for dingbats in addition to alphabetic characters, fonts that have dingbats in place of alphabetic characters continue to be popular, primarily for ease of input. Such fonts are also sometimes known as pi fonts.
Some of the dingbat symbols have been used as signature marks, used in bookbinding to order sections.
A dingbat is an ornament or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament".
Dingbat or dingbats might also refer to:
- Dingbat, slang term referring to someone silly, notably applied to the TV character Edith Bunker by her husband
-
Dingbats (board game), a board game requiring players to solve rebuses and known in America as Whatzit?
- dingbat, another word for rebus derived from the game
- Dingbat (building), a type of cheap urban apartment building built between the 1950s and 1960s
- Dingbat, a paddle ball in South Africa
- Dingbat, a character created by Paul Terry
- the characters in The Dingbat Family, a comic strip drawn by George Herriman from 1910 to 1916
- Dingbat, a cartoon character who co-starred in Heathcliff and Dingbat
- Dingbat, slang term, used as an alternate name for the Dignity Battalions
- Dingbat, a placeholder name for a random or unknown object
A dingbat is a type of formulaic apartment building that flourished in the Sun Belt region of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, a vernacular variation of shoebox style "stucco boxes". Dingbats are boxy, two- or three-story apartment houses with overhangs sheltering street-front parking.
Mainly found in Southern California, but also in Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada and Vancouver, dingbats are known for their downmarket status and inexpensive rents. Some replaced more distinctive but less profitable building structures, such as single-family Victorian homes. Since the 1950s they have been the subject of aesthetic interest as examples of Mid-Century modern design and kitsch, since many dingbats have themed names and specialized trim. Dingbats are also reviled as socially alienating visual blights; California historian Leonard Pitt said of them, "The dingbat typifies Los Angeles apartment building architecture at its worst."
From a structural engineering perspective, the "tuck-under parking" arrangement may create a soft story if the residential levels are supported on slender columns without many shear walls in the parking level.
Usage examples of "dingbat".
He heard Dingbat cough, the snick of the door, then the rustle of various materials as she climbed out of the plane.
Jim, this dingbat looks an awful lot like one of the drivers we use in our spaceships and driver-wing fliers.
Luc felt guilty knowing his loose tongue, or association with that dingbat Sylvie, might have mucked up their case.
Do the words voodoo, live chickens, a love potion, and two dingbat females riding a Harley mean anything to you?
These hidden caches might be worth several million each, which meant they would kill anyone who dared to interfere with their plans, including two dingbat women picking posies.
His expression was a glum one, and the first thing he did was shoulder Dingbat aside in order to reach the bottle.
The fact that Dingbat and Skate knew nothing about the fire until Enwald told them, merely indicated greater depth to the plot.
Perhaps it was his lack of company like Dingbat and Skate that gave Enwald gloss on this occasion.
Skate and Dingbat heard the noise and wheeled about, tugging guns from their hips.
CHAPTER XI - DEATH BELOW LOCKED with two thugs like Skate and Dingbat, The Shadow held advantages that his antagonists did not suspect.
Past the glaring faces of Skate and Dingbat, The Shadow saw Enwald lunging forward with the bottle.
Viciously, Dingbat shoved his gun for The Shadow, pressed the muzzle home.
Knowing that The Shadow would be after him, Dingbat made a headlong flight down the stairs, shouting incoherently as he went.
As Dingbat took a long, hard tumble to the tiled floor of the lobby, The Shadow saw Tilyon and Welf darting into the kitchen.
There was Captain Dingbat, navigating the Sloop John B through New York Harbor and calling the Statue of Liberty a Hotsy-Totsy.