twaddle

• twoddle

An alteration of twattle (1556), of unknown origin.^[1][2]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtwɒdəl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtwɑdəl/

• Audio (General American):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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• Rhymes: -ædəl
• Hyphenation: twad‧dle

twaddle (countable and uncountable, plural twaddles)

1. (uncountable) Empty or silly idle talk or writing; nonsense, rubbish. [from 1782.]

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:chatter

   You're talking a load of twaddle. Get your facts straight, man!

   • 1858 July, “Charlatan Poetry: Martin Farquhar Tupper”, in The National Review, volume 7, number 13, page 162:

     Still, being unfortunate enough to belong to that small but respectable minority who regard Mr. Tupper's versicular philosophy as superficial and conceited twaddle,—as a new manifestation to these latter days of weakness and sentimentalism under the solemn form of the Oracular, […] .

   • 1887, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock & Co., part I (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., […]), chapter II (The Science of Deduction), page 12:

     "What ineffable twaddle!" I cried, slapping the magazine down on the table; "I never read such rubbish in my life."

   • 1907 April, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, The Longest Journey, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, part II (Sawston), page 226:

     I would rather be rude than to listen to twaddle from a man I’ve known.

   • 1918 June, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Prelude”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, chapter 12, page 66:

     It was her other self who had written that letter. It not only bored, it rather disgusted her real self. "Flippant and silly," said her real self. Yet she knew that she'd send it and she'd always write that kind of twaddle to Nan Pym.

   • 2025 October 28, Arifa Akbar, quoting Meera Syal, “‘I spoke complete twaddle for four minutes’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and more on the terror of stage fright”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     I improvised for three or four minutes, speaking complete twaddle in character.

2. (countable) One who twaddles; a twaddler.

twaddle (third-person singular simple present twaddles, present participle twaddling, simple past and past participle twaddled)

1. To talk or write nonsense; to prattle.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 181:

     To Edward […] he was terrible, nerve-inflaming, poisonously asphyxiating. He sat rocking himself in the late Mr. Churchill's swing chair, smoking and twaddling.

• See also Thesaurus:nonsense

• twaddle (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia