Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To talk foolishly; prate.
- n. Foolish, trivial, or idle talk or chatter.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To babble; gabble; prate; especially, to keep up a foolish, prosy chatter.
- n. A twaddler.
- n. Idle, senseless talk; gabble; prosy nonsense.
- n. Perplexity; confusion. Grose, Dict. of Vulgar Tongue. Synonyms Chatter, Jargon, etc. See
prattle , n.
Wiktionary
- n. Empty or silly idle talk or writing; nonsense, rubbish
- n. A twaddler.
- v. To talk or write nonsense; to prattle.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To talk in a weak and silly manner, like one whose faculties are decayed; to prate; to prattle.
- n. Silly talk; gabble; fustian.
WordNet 3.0
- n. pretentious or silly talk or writing
- v. speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly
Etymologies
- 1782, by alteration of twattle (1556), of unknown origin. (Wiktionary)
- Probably variant of dialectal twattle, perhaps alteration of tattle. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The usual uninspired marketing twaddle is neither.”
“More twaddle from the nutcase side of the global warming debate: [G] lobal warming is caused by the widespread sin, immorality, and materialism of our current society.”
“She calls a story in Vogue on "new ways" to carry a handbag "twaddle" and goes on to beseech, "Isn't it time they all tried a little bit harder to be on our side ...?”
“Dixon, of course you find talk of war crimes to be "twaddle", after all, it was you that said that the Serbs did the right thing in massacring Muslims.”
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with...
“The left are rife with corruption and their fare share of "twaddle".”
John Terry’s sacking as England captain tells us something interesting...
“I've heard of it before; but when I was a kid it was called "twaddle".”
“As for what you consider "twaddle", that's the opinion of a paying film fan, whether you like it or not, an opinion that many readers and those who make film do.”
Filmstalker: Filmstalker EIFF 2009 Roundup: Episode 15: Running in Traffic
“In a recent letter to the South Manchester Reporter the author Cath Stanicliffe claimed that she knew instantly that the Christie claim was "twaddle".”
“Her target is nothing less than sentimentality, whether it's as grandiose as the sort exhibited by the sacrosanct "Holocaust industry" or as small as the "twaddle" syncopated by Simon and Garfunkel.”
“How do you figure that kind of twaddle ties in with anything?”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘twaddle’.
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CCle
all those wonderful Britsy words that end with a double consonant followed by 'le'
doddle, bobble, dibble, whiffle, waffle, diddle, piddle, jiggle, straggle, boggle, fiddle, skeedaddle and 125 more...
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truman486's list
Masterbatory Aids
ensorcelled, scintilla, maudlin, lugubrious, frisson, praxis, copasetic, crotch, corollary, bandy, undulating, anthropomorphic and 65 more...
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just neat
insolent, redolent, clammy, chunder, berate, vainqueur, neotony, milquetoast, semprini, twaddle, plethora, enteron and 29 more...
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Noodle and such
noodle, ladle, middle, model, muddle, addle, paddle, piddle, dreidel, toddle, poodle, streudel and 16 more...
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Portmanteau-ism
portmanteau, apophenia, apoplexy, antisyzygy, canard, augur, interstice, sang-froid, agent provocateur, aposiopesis, folderol, twaddle and 5 more...
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Trash Talk
Words that indicate meaningless, confusing or deceptive talk.
white noise, blarney, pidgin, jabber, bullshit, yadda yadda yadda, mishmash, farrago, gobbledygook, yammer, drivel, jargon and 18 more...
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try to use now and then
exacerbate, inveterate, obviate, verbose, exasperate, disingenuous, squit, ingenue, Opiate, opioid, revile, decrepit and 14 more...
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Expressions of disbelief or disagreement
bollocks, come off it, rubbish, as if, bullshit, guff, i don't believe it, are you mad, tosh, nonsense, garbage, bunkum and 58 more...
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Funny words
Words that have funny sounds or mean funny things
moose, noob, olivary, lubes, sapsuckers, mushroom-headed, grayish-pink, spatula-shaped, comely, slipstream, toad, bulb and 25 more...
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Nonsense
I've lost a word. Several months ago, I was reading a tart little essay online (the online counterpart of a British publication, but
*not* my beloved *LRB*, of that I'm pretty sure), and the ...twaddle, codswallop, bafflegab, gimcrackery, balderdash, poppycock, gibberish, tomfoolery, gobbledygook, buffoonery, hogwash, mumbo jumbo and 8 more...
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Your Grandfather's Bad Old World
chicanery, ballyhoo, thaumaturgy, inveigle, wheedle, buncombe, balderdash, twaddle, fustian, lexiphanic, obstreperous, autochthonous and 1 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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btkuhn's list
persnickety, perspicuity, perspicacity, augur, churlish, enervate, schadenfreude, esoteric, lionize, dispositive, capricious, bibulous and 129 more...
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summer words 2009
how many words can I make mine this summer?
largess, hoyden, catholic, fornicatress, quean, slattern, bildungsroman, sybaritic, descresent, nodus, frittle, callipygian and 529 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1459 more...
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Buzelwa Cengimbo
Just me
Tweets
Looking for tweets for twaddle.

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