[? Related to TITTLEBAT and tiddly ‘little.’] Nursery name for a stickleback. So Tiddling vbl. sb., fishing for ‘tiddlers.’

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1835.  B. E. Martin, in Harper’s Mag., May, 866/1. Them’s tiddlers, they is.

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1903.  Blackw. Mag., Aug., 203/2. I used to come and catch tiddlers in it when I was a kid.

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1908.  Daily Chron., 3 Aug., 7/3. Within reach of that most delightful tiddling water in St. James’s Park.

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1911.  Daily News, 26 July, 4. The long row of boys … in St. James’s Park fishing for tiddlers with sticks and bent pins.

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