a small elevator, manually or electrically operated, consisting typically of a box with shelves, used in apartment houses, restaurants, and large private dwellings for moving dishes, food, garbage, etc., between floors.
a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.
a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.
the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
1749, an article of furniture, from dumb + waiter (apparently because it serves as a waiter but is silent). As a movable platform for passing dishes, etc., up and down from one room (especially a basement kitchen) to another, from 1847.