tattoo

noun, plural tat·toos.

1. a signal on a drum, bugle, or trumpet at night, for soldiers or sailors to go to their quarters.
2. a knocking or strong pulsation: My heart beat a tattoo on my ribs.
3. British. an outdoor military pageant or display.

noun, plural tat·toos.

1. the act or practice of marking the skin with indelible patterns, pictures, legends, etc., by making punctures in it and inserting pigments.
2. a pattern, picture, legend, etc., so made.

verb (used with object), tat·tooed, tat·too·ing.

3. to mark (the skin) with tattoos.
4. to put (tattoos) on the skin.

noun plural -toos

1. (formerly) a signal by drum or bugle ordering the military to return to their quarters
2. a military display or pageant, usually at night
3. any similar beating on a drum, etc

verb -toos, -tooing or -tooed

1. to make (pictures or designs) on (the skin) by pricking and staining with indelible colours

noun plural -toos

2. a design made by this process
3. the practice of tattooing

n.1“signal,” 1680s, “signal calling soldiers or sailors to quarters at night,” earlier tap-to (1644, in order of Col. Hutchinson to garrison of Nottingham), from Dutch taptoe, from tap “faucet of a cask” (see tap (n.1)) + toe “shut.” So called because police used to visit taverns in the evening to shut off the taps of casks. Transferred sense of “drumbeat” is recorded from 1755. Hence, Devil’s tattoo “action of idly drumming fingers in irritation or impatience” (1803). n.2“pigment design in skin,” 1769 (noun and verb, both first attested in writing of Capt. Cook), from a Polynesian noun (e.g. Tahitian and Samoan tatau, Marquesan tatu “puncture, mark made on skin”). v.“mark the skin with pigment,” 1769; see tattoo (n.2). Related: Tattooed; tattooing. n. pl. tat•toos

1. A permanent mark or design made on the skin by a process of pricking and ingraining an indelible pigment or by raising scars.

v.

1. To mark the skin with a tattoo.
2. To form a tattoo on the skin.