hoddydoddy
English edit
Etymology edit
From hoddy-dod, an obsolete English regionalism meaning “periwinkle” or “snail”. Compare dodman.
Noun edit
hoddydoddy (plural hoddydoddies)
- (obsolete) An awkward or foolish person.
- 1598, Ben Jonson, Every Man in His Humour, act IV, scene viii:
- Well, good wife bawd, Cob’s wife, and you / That make your husband such a hoddy-doddy ; / And you, young apple-squire, and old cuckold-maker
- 1600, William Kempe, Kemps nine daies vvonder:
- Name my accuſer ſaith he, or I defye thee Kemp at the quart ſtaffe. I told him, & all his anger turned to laughter: ſwearing it did him good to haue ill words of a hoddy doddy, a habber de hoy, a chicken, a ſquib, a ſquall: […]
- (obsolete, England) A snail; a snail’s shell.
- 1899, W.T. Fernie, Animal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure, page 448:
- A River snail in Oxfordshire is “Hoddy-doddy”; in Northamptonshire the Wall snail is “Packman snail.”
References edit
- “Hoddydoddy”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “hoddy-doddy”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.