This site uses cookies. Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site, while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
Cookie settings
The gold brow plumbs the blue
fat night for that

Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

Baby's dummy, soother etc.

English answer:

baby's dummy

    The asker opted for community grading. The question was closed on 2012-06-09 09:54:07 based on peer agreement (or, if there were too few peer comments, asker preference.)
Jun 5, 2012 11:06
11 yrs ago
4 viewers *
English term

Baby's dummy, soother etc.

English Other Retail UK English
Perhaps fifty years ago, the "dummy" (dummy teat) was commonly used to soothe babies and small children. My impression is that this term is less used nowadays and that "soother" or "comforter" are more usual terms in the UK ("pacifier" seems to be the US version, but that doesn't concern me). I've heard "Dodie" used but I imagine that's quite rare - it's basically a French trademark.

If you were to walk into a UK shop tomorrow and ask for one of there items, what word would you use?
Responses
4 +5 baby's dummy
4 +4 soother
Change log

Jun 5, 2012 11:49: Thomas Pfann changed "Language pair" from "Spanish to English" to "English"

Votes to reclassify question as PRO/non-PRO:

Non-PRO (1): Ildiko Santana

When entering new questions, KudoZ askers are given an opportunity* to classify the difficulty of their questions as 'easy' or 'pro'. If you feel a question marked 'easy' should actually be marked 'pro', and if you have earned more than 20 KudoZ points, you can click the "Vote PRO" button to recommend that change.

How to tell the difference between "easy" and "pro" questions:

An easy question is one that any bilingual person would be able to answer correctly. (Or in the case of monolingual questions, an easy question is one that any native speaker of the language would be able to answer correctly.)

A pro question is anything else... in other words, any question that requires knowledge or skills that are specialized (even slightly).

Another way to think of the difficulty levels is this: an easy question is one that deals with everyday conversation. A pro question is anything else.

When deciding between easy and pro, err on the side of pro. Most questions will be pro.

* Note: non-member askers are not given the option of entering 'pro' questions; the only way for their questions to be classified as 'pro' is for a ProZ.com member or members to re-classify it.

Discussion

DLyons (asker) Jun 7, 2012:
@Charles Google usen't, but it's one of the "improvements" they've made in recent years which make real searching increasingly difficult.

Like correcting my spelling even when I've put it in quotes!
Charles Davis Jun 7, 2012:
Quite! But at the risk of being a bore, I would add one more thing, since this question of Google hits is something of a hobbyhorse of mine. I've just done my own searches for "baby's dummy" and "baby's soother" (as phrases) in UK sites. Google announced 53,000 hits for the former and 11,000 for the latter. But the real figures, ascertained by going to the end of the list, were 628 and 338 respectively. Google always does this, and it's very annoying; the initial figure is vastly inflated.

By the way, I repeated the exercise for Ireland, just out of interest. The results (real figures) were 96 and 104 respectively, so there seems to something in what you say, Donal.

Moreover, when I searched for "baby's soother", Google suggested I might have meant "baby soother", so I tried that as well and got a further 220 results in Ireland and 459 in the UK. Quite striking. "Soother", according to this, is more common that I thought.
DLyons (asker) Jun 7, 2012:
@Charles It's hard to know how that remark was intended, or how authoritative it might be. "soother" is certainly the newer term.

I suspect that political correctness carries more weight in this area than statistical correctness.
Charles Davis Jun 7, 2012:
@B D This is all very statistically incorrect, really. The Irish survey was based on 46 responses: hardly a reliable sample. But one respondent said:
"Dummy-Dublin
Soother-Country folk",
the first part of which gave rise to predictable jokes about Dubliners, but it was the second part that struck me, since I thought "soother" was the newer and more American term.
DLyons (asker) Jun 7, 2012:
@all Thanks to everyone who responded!
DLyons (asker) Jun 7, 2012:
@ B. D. That seems right to me - my very subjective impression is that "dummy" has dropped out of favour in Ireland.
B D Finch Jun 7, 2012:
@Charles If you (very statistically incorrectly) compare the ratios between that poll and the result I got Googling the two terms, it could mean that popular opinion in Ireland is 2:1 in favour and in the UK is 10:1 in favour of "dummy".

I am in favour now of the person who answered "thumb" (though that's worse for the baby's teeth).
DLyons (asker) Jun 5, 2012:
@Charles No, not I. Thanks for the link though, I Googled but missed that one.
Charles Davis Jun 5, 2012:
Mothercare call them "soothers". My first reaction was definitely "dummy". I suspect more people call them "dummies" at home, but the shops tend to market them as "soothers" (which is more or less what Barbara said). Maybe "dummy" is becoming a bit old-fashioned; I'm not sure. You might ask for a "soother" in a shop because that is what you're "supposed" to call them.
Charles Davis Jun 5, 2012:
This wasn't you, was it? http://foot.ie/threads/47956-Dummy-or-Soother
Evans (X) Jun 5, 2012:
I think I'd still use the word "dummy". Thinking that perhaps it reflects my aversion to the things, I asked a couple of friends with small children and they both said "dummy" straight away (very small sample straw poll!).

Responses

+5
56 mins
Selected

baby's dummy

Though it is usually used to mean a dummy, a "baby's soother" can be a variety of other things too:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Babies-Soother-Bear-Cloth-Teddy/dp/B...

I think that parents would use the term "dummy", while marketing people may prefer the term "soother" as it is more positive sounding. If you google them restricting the search to UK sites, "baby's dummy" gets over 80K ghits, while "baby's soother" only gets 8K ghits.
Peer comment(s):
agree Sarah Mathrick : This is the term I would naturally use, and have heard used by parents all over the UK.
4 mins
Thanks Sarah
agree Charles Davis : This matches my own instincts.
16 mins
Thanks Charles
agree Evans (X) : Agree, as I said in the discussion box.
54 mins
Thanks Gilla
agree Dr. Andrew Frankland
1 hr
Thanks Andrew
agree ANNIE BATTEN
2 hrs
Thanks Annie
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "There's obviously no "right" answer to this, but I find the p.c. argument persuasive."
+4
7 mins

soother

I would go for 'soother' because it seems to be more fashionable in the UK these days than 'dummy'. 'Comforter' I think can refer to other items which comfort the baby such as blankets, etc.
Reference:

http://www.tommeetippee.co.uk/department/soothers/

http://www.babysleepshop.com/baby-comforters.html

Peer comment(s):
agree Liam Quinn
28 mins
Thanks, Liam!
agree Veronika McLaren
40 mins
Thanks, Veronika.
agree carly kelly
45 mins
Thanks, Carly.
agree Suzanne Donnelly
5 hrs
Thanks, Suzanne.
Something went wrong...
Close search
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search