1915–20; < French: hobby horse, childish reduplication of da giddyap
Dada is another way to say "daddy" or "papa," a nickname for your father. The word dada is also the name of an early 20th-century art movement that protested conventional ideas using humor and absurdity. Across most cultures, dada is an extremely common first word (or sound) spoken by babies. In English, this is usually translated as "dad" or "daddy," and it sometimes continues to be a young child's name for their father. The avant-garde art movement took the word as its name, often capitalized as Dada, from its silly, innocent sound and multiple meanings (including "rocking horse" in French and "yes, yes" in Romanian). Ironically, this art movement was intentionally anti-art, with Dadaist artists claiming that "Dada means nothing."
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In some ways, that is what makes it dada to me.
From Salon ● Mar. 21, 2025
Mr Currie's show, Shtoom, is described on the theatre website as a "unique, surrealist, dada punk-clown, non-verbal experience".
From BBC ● Feb. 13, 2024
With no resonating chamber in the throat, they can manage little beyond mama, dada, ga-ga.
From New York Times ● Feb. 10, 2021
Some remind me of the Fauvist paintings, while others feel cubist and still others are straight-up dada.
From The Guardian ● May 8, 2020
Like she must hear her mommy or her dada say.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Music was central to two contemporary Dada sculptures, which are also sure to be among the most Instagrammed works this week.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
In July this year, an alleged Ghanaian fraudster, popularly known as Dada Joe Remix, was extradited to the US for using romance and inheritance schemes to defraud Americans.
From BBC ● Dec. 12, 2025
"Travesties" two years later, imagined a meeting between Lenin, James Joyce and poet and founder of the Dada movement Tristan Tzara, who all lived in Zurich in 1917.
From Barron's ● Nov. 29, 2025
Park samples many of that novel’s tricks in his new story collection, “An Oral History of Atlantis,” creating his own brand of Dada.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2025
Dada nodded and smiled while Abay lowered her scarf from around her mouth.
From "Shooting Kabul" by N. H. Senzai
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
