Definitions

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

  • noun United States A game in which the object is to snap small disks of plastic, bone, ivory, or the like, from a flat surface, as of a table, into a small cup or basket; -- called also tiddlywinks.

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Examples

  • I was sorry to miss such an evening, and think I could forego tiddledywinks with a fair degree of amiability if, instead, I could hear such a man talk.

    Reveries of a Schoolmaster Francis B. Pearson

  • I plainly see that I have played my last game of tiddledywinks and solitaire.

    Reveries of a Schoolmaster Francis B. Pearson

  • I fear to play tiddledywinks lest my hour may resume the guise of a hag.

    Reveries of a Schoolmaster Francis B. Pearson

  • If I can recite even these six plays in those six evenings I shall feel that I did well in deciding for Shakespeare instead of tiddledywinks.

    Reveries of a Schoolmaster Francis B. Pearson

  • And always Gertie Cowles, gently hesitant toward Ben Rusk's affection, kept asking Carl why he didn't come to see her oftener, and play tiddledywinks.

    The Trail of the Hawk A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life Sinclair Lewis 1918

  • I still class fishing and golf together with tiddledywinks, and eschew all three as thoughtfully as I avoid bazaars and "crushes" given by the ladies of both sexes.

    Caves of Terror Talbot Mundy 1909

  • The little tiddledywinks business that I've got to learn -- all the value there is in the mass of balderdash about manners and dress -- I can learn it in a few lessons.

    The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig; a Novel David Graham Phillips 1889

  • My boys play travel baseball, but my colleagues tell me the same thing happens in travel soccer, travel hockey and even travel tiddledywinks.

    Freep.com - RSS 2010

  • Think of the thousands and millions that are being demoralized by games of chance, by marbles -- when they play for keeps -- by billiards and croquet, by fox and geese, authors, halma, tiddledywinks and pigs in clover.

    The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. Interviews Robert Green Ingersoll 1866

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  • Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

    Pronunciation: \ˈti-dəl-dē-ˌwiŋ(k)s\

    Variant(s): or tid·dly·winks \ˈti-dəl-ē-, ˈtid-lē-\

    Function: noun plural but singular in construction

    Etymology: probably from English dialect tiddly little, alteration of little

    Date: 1892

    : a game whose object is to snap small disks from a flat surface into a small container

    January 28, 2008