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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. v. To talk foolishly; prate.
  2. n. Foolish, trivial, or idle talk or chatter.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. To babble; gabble; prate; especially, to keep up a foolish, prosy chatter.
  2. n. A twaddler.
  3. n. Idle, senseless talk; gabble; prosy nonsense.
  4. n. Perplexity; confusion. Grose, Dict. of Vulgar Tongue. Synonyms Chatter, Jargon, etc. See prattle, n.

Wiktionary

  1. n. Empty or silly idle talk or writing; nonsense, rubbish
  2. n. A twaddler.
  3. v. To talk or write nonsense; to prattle.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. v. To talk in a weak and silly manner, like one whose faculties are decayed; to prate; to prattle.
  2. n. Silly talk; gabble; fustian.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. pretentious or silly talk or writing
  2. v. speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly

Etymologies

  1. Probably variant of dialectal twattle, perhaps alteration of tattle.

Examples

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘twaddle’.

Comments

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  • bilby "I have no right to do so … it is inappropriate to twaddle, toy and tool anyone's (sp) object. " — newmatilda.com Nov 19, 2009

  • milosrdenstvi The example is rather hilarious: "The solemn unction with which he pronounced this twaddle is beyond description." Nov 19, 2009

  • bilby I lived in Italy for 4 years and never came across a pizzeria that offered extra cheese. Maybe you could find that option if you haunted tourist dives religiously but, frankly Liz, it's extra cheese which represents 'wannabe pizza twaddle', while olives are quite a traditional ingredient. Aug 10, 2009

  • mollusque They have only two varieties of pizza here — regular and extra cheese. None of this new age southern California olives-and-sun-dried-tomato wannabe pizza twaddle.
    --Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, p. 80 Aug 10, 2009

  • ambyellen appears in the iphone game Moxie; a fun word game. It's also frustrating because it exclaims "twaddle!" at you when you enter a word which it doesn't recognize, but that actually is a word! Jul 23, 2009

  • arby Found a great new synonym for this - taradiddle! Sep 10, 2007

  • arby andrew.simone, there's a good reason for that - it sounds like twat!

    I love this word, both because it means nonsense and because it's one of the few words that rhymes with waddle - it's a waddling twat!

    I remember Topps made a series of toys (over 10 years ago now) called Baby Wild Animals - they came with little candy baby bottles, and the seal was named Twaddle. This cracked me up endlessly. May 4, 2007

  • whatever1013 first heard this one on Red Dwarf -- a late 80's-early 90's britcom. Feb 4, 2007

  • andrew.simone This word always sounds dirty to me. Dec 12, 2006

‘twaddle’ has been looked up 2073 times, loved by 8 people, added to 60 lists, commented on 9 times, and has a Scrabble score of 12.