Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To spend or waste time in trifling employments, or to attend to useful subjects in a trifling or superficial manner; be of a trifling, time-wasting character.
- To criticize.
- n. One who quiddles, or busies himself about, trifles. Also quiddler.
- To quiver; shiver; tremble; creep, as live flesh: as, the fish were still quiddling.
Wiktionary
- v. intransitive, rare To talk nonsense or speak vaguely, to waffle
- v. intransitive, rare To spend or waste time in trifling employments, or to attend to useful subjects in a trifling superficial manner.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To spend time in trifling employments, or to attend to useful subjects in an indifferent or superficial manner; to dawdle.
- n. One who wastes his energy about trifles.
Examples
“Maclay found the Senate was afflicted with “a rage of speaking,” while Ames complained that his colleagues in the House “correct spelling or erase may and insert shall, and quiddle in a manner which provokes me.””
“She like to quiddle about the china-closet, prepare the salt-cellars, put the spoons straight on the table; and every day went round the parlor with her brush, dusting chairs and tables.”
“That 's the way things goes, and I should like to know who's a going to stop to quiddle with young uns?”
“The Englishman is very petulant and precise about his accommodation at inns, and on the roads; a quiddle about his toast and his chop, and every species of convenience, and loud and pungent in his expressions of impatience at any neglect.”
“The P's take us from pandowdy to pompey to pudjicky; the Q's offer qualmish, quick start, and quiddle; in R we find ramstugious, redd up, robin snow, and rumpelkammer; and S yields saluggi, say-so, and smearcase.”
“Here's a quorum of such quatches ripe for revival, ready for your quaintance: quaddle (grumble), quizzity (oddity), querken (stifle), quiddle (dawdle), querimony (complaint), queme (pleasant), quetch (go), queeve (twist in a road).”
“This last is a dry crust put between our gums to mump upon, when weaning time comes on, which are bad days for little ones, who would much rather quiddle the breast, as long as there is a drop to be got, but it must not be ao done in our country, for fear of making us”
Internet Archive: Gleanings of the Vintage, Or Letters to the Spiritual Edification of the ...
“In case you didn't recognize those Volume IV headwords, here they are again: pandowdy a deep-dish pie or cobbler pompey bulging or sagging (used in reference to a floor or a surface of ice) pudjicky sullen, grouchy qualmish queasy quick start a sneaker quiddle to fuss over unimportant matters ramstugious violent and reckless in behavior redd up to clean, tidy up robin snow a light snowfall rumpelkammer a junk room or storage place saluggi (spelled in various other ways as well) a”
“I always fret him, he says, and it isn't my fault if I am a quiddle, "protested Steve, in self-defence.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘quiddle’.
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phrontistery - q
from phrontistery.info
quoz, quotuple, quotum, quotition, quotiety, quotidian, quotha, quotennial, quotatious, quorate, quondam, quomodocunquize and 227 more...
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Wordie/Wordnik Curio Cabinet
Oddments culled from my "main" lists that belong in a display cabinet of their own, plus sundry other curiosities. :-)
zeugma, ziggurat, xiphoid, xeric, whizgigging, whangdoodle, viviparous, vivific, vinolent, verjuice, vellicate, velleity and 1193 more...
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Trump that synonym!
Better alternatives for common words.
ex cathedra, screed, de rigueur, palpable, wheedle, piebald, incongruity, cassandra, xantippe, ebullient, exuberant, fainéant and 178 more...
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a good word
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fun ones
fun to say or fun in meaning
sizzard, clou, matutolagnia, grok, xiphoid, cwm, cattywampus, scroop, loblolly, katzenjammer, sphygmus, forfex and 68 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for quiddle.
reesetee One who spends time in trifling employments or attends to useful subjects in an indifferent or superficial manner; a dawdler. Mar 13, 2008