doodle
/ˈduːd(ə)l
/- I picked my pen up and began to draw her, absent-mindedly doodling in the margins of the paper.
- Apparently, science just wasn't his thing, because he was scribbling and doodling all over the front page of his science book.
- I sipped a coffee, my favourite blend, and doodled absent-mindedly on my notepad.
- In the notebook were pretty drawings, simple little doodles of simple little joys.
- He stared down at the pages filled with notes, the margins empty of any sort of drawings or doodles.
- She said: ‘I am delighted with the response I received, from simple doodles and sketches to more elaborate paintings.’
Derivatives
doodler
- ‘The ways of plain folk,’ he says, ‘is rich material for doodlers like me.’
- And this at a time when, for a good century, art schools had been turning doodlers into artists.
- Memories of my years as a childhood doodler resurface from time to time.
Origin
Early 17th century (originally as a noun denoting a fool, later as a verb in the sense 'make a fool of, cheat'): from Low German dudeltopf, dudeldopp 'simpleton'. Current senses date from the 1930s.
If you are a doodler, you may not be pleased to know that the original meaning of doodle was ‘a fool, a simpleton’. The word came from German dudeltopf or dudeldopp in the early 17th century. The modern senses, ‘to scribble absent-mindedly’ and ‘a rough drawing’, date from the 1930s. The Second World War doodlebug, or German V-1 flying bomb, may have got its name from the 1930s slang sense ‘a small car or railway locomotive’, or from the English dialect use ‘cockchafer’. A cockchafer is a large beetle which flies around slowly at dusk, making a deep hum.
Rhymes
- trailer park
- trailer-sailer
- trailer trash
- trailer truck
- trailhead
- trailing arbutus
- trailing edge
- trailing wheel
- trail mix
- trail one's coat
- train
- trainability
- trainable
- trainband
- train-bearer
- train-bearing
- train bolt
- train boy
- train call
- train caller
- train compartment
- train depot
- train dispatcher
- traineau
- trainee