tattoo
1 Americannoun
-
tattoos
plural
-
a signal on a drum, bugle, or trumpet at night, for soldiers or sailors to go to their quarters.
-
a knocking or strong pulsation.
My heart beat a tattoo on my ribs.
-
British. an outdoor military pageant or display.
noun
-
tattoos
plural
-
the act or practice of marking the skin with indelible patterns, pictures, legends, etc., by making punctures in it and inserting pigments.
-
a pattern, picture, legend, etc., so made.
verb (used with object)
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tattoos,
present (3rd person singular)
-
tattooed,
past participle, past
-
tattooing
present participle
-
to mark (the skin) with tattoos.
-
to put (tattoos) on the skin.
noun
-
(formerly) a signal by drum or bugle ordering the military to return to their quarters
-
a military display or pageant, usually at night
-
any similar beating on a drum, etc
verb
noun
-
a design made by this process
-
the practice of tattooing
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
tattoosimple
-
tattoossimple
-
have tattooedperfect
-
has tattooedperfect
-
am tattooingprogressive
-
are tattooingprogressive
-
is tattooingprogressive
-
have been tattooingperfect progressive
-
has been tattooingperfect progressive
Past
-
tattooedsimple
-
had tattooedperfect
-
was tattooingprogressive
-
were tattooingprogressive
-
had been tattooingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of tattoo1
First recorded in 1570–80; earlier taptoo, from Dutch taptoe, literally, “shut tap,” from tap “spigot, tap” + toe “closed, shut”; cognate with tap 2 ( def. ), to ( def. )
Origin of tattoo2
First recorded in 1760–70; from Marquesan tatu; replacing tattow, from Tahitian tatau
Explanation
A tattoo is a permanent design made on skin with a needle and ink. If you want a butterfly tattoo but you're scared of needles, you might settle for a temporary version. The word tattoo is also a verb meaning stain the skin using needles and ink. It's probably a good idea to wait until you've been dating someone for more than a week before you tattoo their name on your arm. In music, a tattoo is continuous drumming, and a military tattoo is a drum or bugle that signals soldiers to return to their quarters at the end of the day.
Vocabulary lists containing tattoo
"The Tell-Tale Heart," Vocabulary from the short story
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Commonly Misspelled Words, List 1
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Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He’s shadowed a dog groomer, a radio show host and a ramen shop owner, and is reviewing requests from an airline captain and a tattoo artist.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 2026
"I do have a Bake Off tattoo on my ribs - I've got a piping bag, a whisk and a rolling pin," she said.
From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026
Right now I’m really into Martha who is a henna tattoo artist, so I just get blasted with henna tattoos.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 4, 2026
"But when we showed them the body, one of the women realised it wasn't her husband because there was a tattoo on the arm."
From Barron's ● Aug. 30, 2026
I guess I didn’t know enough about tattoo parlors to imagine one at all.
From "Starfish" by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Even today, some older men bear facial tattoos associated with the Konyaks' historical practice of headhunting.
From BBC ● Sep. 24, 2026
In the popular imagination, a Viking is tall, broad-shouldered man who wields a sword, and might have a modern haircut like a skin fade or lots of tattoos.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 23, 2026
L.A.’s Michelle Bunny has five rabbit tattoos with plans for more.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026
Covered in tattoos, with his hair in a long braid, 35-year-old Australian DJ and former boy-band member Lenny Pearce looks more like an all-night raver than a children’s host.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026
She complains to the other nurse that we patients don’t have enough structured time, and in the end, she gets the orderly with the scary tattoos to escort me away.
From "Challenger Deep" by Neal Shusterman
Dr Konyak points to explorers, colonial officials, missionaries and photographers drawn to tattooed faces, ornaments, weapons and headhunting, while the lives behind them often receded from view.
From BBC ● Sep. 24, 2026
The glow of her computer occasionally caught her sharp cheekbones and bounced off her chin, highlighting the thin tattooed line that bisects it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026
In several of her novels, Ms. Mandel has had characters with beloved quotations tattooed on their bodies, a practice that inspired a real-life trend of the author’s fans being inked with lines from her books.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Every tattooed person he interviewed in the 2000s for his research cited David Beckham as their inspiration; the footballer made a statement when he got his first inking in 1999.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
He paid his quarter to see an amazing tattooed baby, and of course he was mad as could be when it turned out to be Howard McCluskey with pictures drawn all over his head.
From "The Best School Year Ever" by Barbara Robinson
Even if the choice of this outfit is that Wang is soft-launching his stick-and-poke tattooing side hustle, it’s still a conscious choice.
From Slate ● Oct. 3, 2026
But he is standing tall at the plate, tattooing balls at the letters, double-fisting his follow-throughs and, importantly, generally showing discernment about the strike zone.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
“You’re not tattooing your face. You’re painting your walls,” she says as a way to encourage others to experiment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 21, 2026
While he sported multiple tattoos, these days “people are tattooing their entire faces—and then having surgery to remove their lips and ears, so they look like aliens.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2025
They scrubbed him so much that the arabesques of his tattooing began to fade.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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