doodle
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Originally dialectal, from Low German 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.
Inflected forms:
form: doodles
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: doodles
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: doodling
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: doodled
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: doodled
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A fool, a simpleton, a mindless person.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: 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.
Perceval. Weep on! weep on! thou flouted loon,
Weep on! weep on! thou gowky doodle!
Courtier, it was thine to bow —
 Great Arthur he, and Doodle thou!
gloss: A small mindless sketch, etc.
pos: noun
gloss: The penis.
pos: noun
tags: childish
slang
sometimes
examples: His doodle hung as limp as last month's celery.
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.
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.
gloss: To draw or scribble aimlessly.
pos: verb
tags: ambitransitive
examples: The bored student doodled a submarine in his notebook.
The managing director doodled.
gloss: To engage in something non-seriously; fiddle.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
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.
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.
gloss: To drone like a bagpipe.
pos: verb
tags: Scotland
Related words: doddle
fadoodle
flapdoodle
Derived words: cheese doodle
cock-a-doodle-do
cock-a-doodle-doo
dipsy-doodle
dipsy doodle
doodlebrain
doodlebug
doodle-bug
doodlehead
doodlelike
doodler
doodly
droodle
flap doodle
flap-doodle
fopdoodle
fuck-a-doodle-doo
Google Doodle
holy doodle
sardoodledom
whang-doodle
Yankee Doodle
Translations: