Wiktionary

doodle

English

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WOTD – 6 November 2009
 
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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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Originally dialectal, from dudeldopp (“simpleton”). Influenced by dawdle. Compare also German dudeln (“to play (the bagpipe)”).

The word doodle first appeared in the early 17th century to mean a fool or simpleton. German variants of the etymon include Dudeltopf, Dudentopf, Dudenkopf, Dude and Dödel. American English dude may be a derivation of doodle.

The meaning "fool, simpleton" is intended in the song title "Yankee Doodle", originally sung by British colonial troops prior to the American Revolutionary War. This is also the origin of the early eighteenth century verb to doodle, meaning "to swindle or to make a fool of". The modern meaning emerged in the 1930s either from this meaning or from the verb "to dawdle", which since the seventeenth century has had the meaning of wasting time or being lazy.

Noun

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doodle (plural doodles)

  1. (obsolete) A fool, a simpleton, a mindless person.
    • 1764, Samuel Foote, The Mayor of Garrett, W. Lowndes (1797), page 43:
      Mrs. Sneak. Why doodle! jackanapes! harkee, who am I?
      Sneak. Come, don't go to call names: am I? vhy my vife, and I am your master.
    • 1812, "THE TEARS OF SIR VICARY!!!", The Scourge, 2 March 1812, page 231:
      Perceval. Weep on! weep on! thou flouted loon,
      Weep on! weep on! thou gowky doodle!
    • 1837 November, “Carmen Inaugurale”, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, page 676:
      Courtier, it was thine to bow —
      Great Arthur he, and Doodle thou!
  2. A small mindless sketch, etc.
  3. (slang, sometimes childish) The penis.
    • 1993, Patti Walkuski, No Bed of Roses: Memoirs of a Madam, Wakefield Press, published 1993, →ISBN, page 189:
      His doodle hung as limp as last month's celery.
    • 1996, Jane Bonander, Winter Heart, Pocket Star Books, published 1996, →ISBN, page 43:
      Her favorite had been when she'd convinced the lascivious guards that Dinah's red hair meant she was a witch, and if they molested her, their doodles would shrivel up between their legs and fall off. Daisy had assured her that no man would risk losing his doodle.
    • 2011, Lexi George, Demon Hunting in Dixie‎[1], Brava Books, published 2011, →ISBN:
      All of Dwight's parts wandered, especially his doodle. He had the wandering-est doodle in three states. His doodle had its own set of legs. His doodle was hardly at home. Heck, according to rumor Dwight Farris's doodle was hardly ever in his pants.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:doodle.
Synonyms
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Derived terms
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Translations
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See also
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Verb

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doodle (third-person singular simple present doodles, present participle doodling, simple past and past participle doodled)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To draw or scribble aimlessly.
    The bored student doodled a submarine in his notebook.
  2. (intransitive, with with and/or around) To engage in something non-seriously; fiddle.
    • 1984 August 4, Maida Tilchen, “Sex, Politics, and Good Vibes”, in Gay Community News, page 9:
      I've been expecting women's music finally to discover New Wave and technopop, and this album is the evidence that someone has been peaking [sic] at music videos and doodling around with sythesizers.
    • 2003 February 23, 14tonks, “More doctors charging for e-mail and phone calls”, in sci.med.transcription‎[2] (Usenet):
      I can tell you that he does indeed spend a lot of time on business and social calls, social chats, doodling around on AOL, and skimming the daily paper while those patients are piling up.
    • 2016 May 19, JanPB, “Quantization of Gravity”, in sci.physics.relativity‎[3] (Usenet):
      For quite a long time now (at least the 1990s) people have been doodling with the idea of separating space and time again and perhaps endowing them with some properties currently not assigned to them.
  3. (Scotland) To drone like a bagpipe.
Translations
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Etymology 2

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Extracted from Labradoodle, itself a blend of labrador and poodle

Noun

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doodle (plural doodles)

  2. Any crossbreed of a poodle with a different breed of dog.

See also

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Spanish

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Etymology

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Unadapted borrowing from English doodle.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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doodle m (plural doodles)

  1. doodle

Usage notes

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According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

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