taradiddle

noun

tar·​a·​did·​dle ˌter-ə-ˈdi-dᵊl 

ˌta-rə-ˈdi-dᵊl,

ˈter-ə-ˌdi-dᵊl,

ˈta-rə-ˌdi-dᵊl

variants or tarradiddle

1

: fib

2

: pretentious nonsense

Did you know?

The true origin of taradiddle is unknown, but that doesn't mean you won't encounter a lot of balderdash about its history. Some folks try to connect it to the verb diddle (one meaning of which is "to swindle or cheat"), but that connection hasn't been proven and may turn out to be poppycock. You may even hear some tommyrot about this particular sense of diddle coming from the Old English verb didrian, which meant "to deceive," but that couldn't be true unless didrian was somehow suddenly revived after eight or nine centuries of disuse. No one even knows when taradiddle was first used. It must have been before it showed up in a 1796 dictionary of colloquial speech (where it was defined as a synonym of fib), but if we claimed we knew who said it first, and when, we'd be dishing out pure applesauce.

Synonyms

• fable
• fabrication
• fairy tale
• falsehood
• falsity
• fib
• lie
• mendacity
• prevarication
• story
• tale
• untruth
• whopper

Examples of taradiddle in a Sentence

his tales of adventure are peppered with tongue-in-cheek taradiddles and obvious fabrications

regards literary deconstruction as so much tenure-track taradiddle

Recent Examples on the Web

Some are esoteric but still used—like taradiddle, which the list notes was recently used by J.K. Rowling but saw more play in the work of Gilbert and Sullivan, Honoré de Balzac and G.K. Chesterton. —Kat Eschner, Smithsonian, 28 Feb. 2017

Word History

Etymology

origin unknown

First Known Use

circa 1796, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for taradiddle

• diddle
• fiddle
• griddle
• middle
• riddle

Podcast

Get Word of the Day delivered to your inbox!