Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Slang Foolish talk; nonsense: "Behind the tourist flap-doodle, authentic [Key West] cooking is produced by the descendants of Bahamian English and Cubans, who migrated to this coral reef over a century ago” ( Betty Fussell).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The stuff on which fools are feigned to be nourished; food for fools.
- n. Transparent pretense or nonsense, as gross flattery, nonsensical talk, or foolish boasting.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable nonsense
- n. countable Speakers and writers of nonsense.
Etymologies
- Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“But when an imported greenhorn dares to call his flapdoodle mixture 'Californian,' it is an insult to the State that has produced the gifted 'Yellow Hammer,' whose lofty flights have from time to time dazzled our readers in the columns of the 'Jay Hawk.”
“But Being and Time cannot be dismissed as "flapdoodle" on the grounds of biography alone.”
“So ended what has grandiloquently been termed "an Australian engagement," which, I may add, is just the kind of flapdoodle our troopers do not want.”
Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) Letters from the Front
“You're the last man I ever expected to hear that kind of flapdoodle from.”
“After years of ruinous government profligacy on every citizen-demanded flapdoodle—from a Frisbee golf course in Austin, Texas, to West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing—Americans view both parties with disdain.”
The Wall Street Journal: The Unhappy Paradox of Santa-Statism
“In an effort to sanitize Paramount's portrait of a demimondaine, the studio publicity department churned out reams of flapdoodle, defining Holly as a "kook" rather than a B-girl.”
“At the time everyone thought the claim was "sheer mystical flapdoodle," as one American expert termed it.”
“Biden emphatically rejected what he rightly called the "unitary executive" theory of the presidency -- the flapdoodle cooked up by David Addington and John Yoo to legitimize torture and a host of other unseemly policies pursued by the Bush administration.”
Jacob Heilbrunn: Cheney's Out of Angles and Biden's Full of Them
“I remember getting annoyed with the "plagiarism" flapdoodle.”
CNN: Exits Show That Half Of Hillary's Indiana Backers Say They Wouldn't Back Obama Against McCain
“If it comes from Clark, that will just revive the whole Bob Shieffer generated flapdoodle, and no matter how reasonable Clark happened to be about that issue, it got turned into something that probably damaged Obama rather than McCain.”
Obama Campaign: McCain Is Defying Iraqi Government's Desire For Withdrawal Timeline
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘flapdoodle’.
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phrontistery - f
from phrontistery.info
fabaceous, fabiform, fabulist, faburden, face-cord, facetiae, facia, facinorous, factious, factitious, factitive, factive and 418 more...
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Folksy Compounds
Those great mashup words that sound like somebody's grampa made them up.
flabbergasted, flibbertigibbet, fussbudget, snickerpuss, chickabiddy, clapperclaw, screaming meemies, snicker-snack, hornswoggle, humdinger, crinkum-crankum, callithump and 11 more...
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Nonsense
Synonyms of "nonsense"
tomfoolery, balderdash, poppycock, lalapalooza, hullabaloo, hodgepodge, gibberish, shenanigans, hootenanny, jabberwocky, gobbledygook, mummery and 21 more...
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Valuseless
Of low worth or little importance.
Unwanted matter by drusky is a nice, related list.trivial, cheap, inutile, ineffectual, dross, floccinaucinihili..., gimcrack, frippery, invalidated, drivel, otiose, tripe and 91 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. II
cicurate, circumforaneous, codger, comiconomenclaturist, constable, contradistinction, contraindicated, counterpane, coxcomb, decalcomania, decanal, decoction and 307 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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Cold Comfort Farm
From the novel by Stella Gibbons
tyro, bustle, locust years, lambency, mere, berg, fen, bilious, cataclysm, flapdoodle, vulgar, serener and 98 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Maineisms
Some of these were taken from older literature and have fallen out of use in the past few decades, but many are still used today in the same way they were used a century ago. By no means a compreh...
Yankeedom, wizzled, wing and wing, wickie-up, whiffletree, weewaw, wangan, wainy, upstair, twice-laid, tunket, trig and 136 more...
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ulyssean
... as in "by James Joyce"
stately, plump, aloft, gurgling, untonsured, chrysostomos, jowl, parapet, jesuit, indigestion, scutter, noserag and 688 more...
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huck finnian
ain't, stretchers, without, sivilize, hogshead, victuals, bulrushers, tolerable, goggles, middling, reckoned, who-whooing and 287 more...
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Mélange
doggerel, odsbodkins, platitudinous, ennui, strappleberry, stygian, inchoate, incipient, deleterious, gnarled, troglodyte, interlocutor and 96 more...
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Odd-Ball
Just plain fun to say and wonder about their origins.
rapscallion, ramahanukwanzmas, cockamamie, nincompoop, hemidemisemiquaver, antiinterdenomina..., cattywampus, ragamuffin, tatterdemalion, blunderbuss, brobdingnagian, tintinnabulation and 127 more...
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My Words
heuristic, malapropism, vicissitude, discursive, interstitial, velleity, phosphene, pandiculate, obdormition, vertiginous, flibbertigibbet, truculent and 128 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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Not Quite The Real Thang
masquerade, sham, counterfeit, shyster, phoney, bogus, pseudo, artificial, fabricated, mock, concocted, false and 158 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for flapdoodle.
Louises "Who are not really sure if the sentence is Literature or whether it is just sheer flapdoodle. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm. Feb 15, 2013
john "The stuff on which fools are feigned to be nourished"? Century, rocking it. Apr 2, 2011
jinglebelljosie nonsense, foolish talk Nov 8, 2008
brtom Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on.
Joyce, Ulysses, 8 Jan 3, 2007