Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A dunce or fool; a simpleton.
  • noun Any of several terns of the genera Anous and Procelsterna, found in tropical waters and usually having dark brown or black plumage with a white or gray head.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make a fool of.
  • noun A simpleton; a fool.
  • noun A large dark-colored tern or sea-swallow of the subfamily Sterninæ and the group Anoëæ or genus Anoüs, found on most tropical and warm-temperate sea-coasts: so called from their apparent stupidity.
  • noun The murre, Lomvia troile.
  • noun The ruddy duck, Erismatura rubida.
  • noun An old game of cards, supposed to have been played like cribbage.
  • noun The knave in this game.
  • noun A kind of four-wheeled cab with the door at the back, formerly in use.
  • noun A device designed to show the oscillation of the support of a pendulum.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A simpleton; a fool.
  • noun Any tern of the genus Anous, as Anous stolidus.
  • noun The arctic fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis). Sometimes also applied to other sea birds.
  • noun An old game at cards.
  • noun A small two-wheeled one-horse vehicle.
  • noun An inverted pendulum consisting of a short vertical flat spring which supports a rod having a bob at the top; -- used for detecting and measuring slight horizontal vibrations of a body to which it is attached.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A stupid or silly person.
  • noun Any of several stout-bodied, gregarious terns of the genera Anous and Procelsterna, found in tropical seas.
  • noun dated A small two-wheeled vehicle drawn by a single horse.
  • noun An inverted pendulum consisting of a short vertical flat spring which supports a rod having a bob at the top; used for detecting and measuring slight horizontal vibrations of a body to which it is attached.
  • noun obsolete, uncountable An old card game.
  • noun television A cutaway scene of a television interviewer nodding, used to cover an editing gap in an interview.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps from obsolete noddy, foolish, possibly from nod.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably a shortening of noddypoll, a now obsolete alteration of hoddypoll, "fumbling inept person".

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

nod +‎ -y?

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

nod +‎ -y, coined by John Fiske in 1987.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word noddy.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • A reaction shot of an interviewer that is recorded and inserted into video or film to disguise edits or to give the impression that an interviewer is listening to an interviewee. (Double-Tongued Dictionary)

    May 18, 2008

  • Found while researching the etymological origins of noddypoop and poop-noddy. Acc. to OED, noddy by itself means:

    1. A fool, a simpleton. Cf. NOD n.2 Now rare.

    2. a. Any of several terns of the genera Anous and Procelsterna, mostly tropical and with dark plumage; esp. (more fully common noddy) A. stolidus. Also noddy bird, noddy tern.

    b. Newfoundland and U.S. regional (north-east.). The northern fulmar, Fulmarus glacialis.

    October 15, 2008

  • Webster's 1913:

    # (n.) A simpleton; a fool.

    # (n.) A small two-wheeled one-horse vehicle.

    # (n.) An inverted pendulum consisting of a short vertical flat spring which supports a rod having a bob at the top; -- used for detecting and measuring slight horizontal vibrations of a body to which it is attached.

    # (n.) An old game at cards.

    # (n.) Any tern of the genus Anous, as A. stolidus.

    # (n.) The arctic fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis). Sometimes also applied to other sea birds.

    October 22, 2008

  • Property developer Sir Stuart Lipton, deputy chairman of Chelsfield Partners, added his voice to the criticism, telling the Thames Gateway Forum that the project is at a crossroads: "Will this be one of the biggest projects in UK history that has been dumbed down by Noddy architecture?" If it goes wrong, it could end up with "cheap" and "isolated" estates lacking facilities, he explained.

    - "Will new towns repeat the same mistakes of high-rise housing?", Guardian.co.uk, 28.12.2008

    December 29, 2008

  • (n): and old name for the card-board game of cribbage.

    January 20, 2009