[Origin obscure: not found a. 1780; perh. an alteration of the earlier TWATTLE (known as vb. from 1573, as sb. from 1639; in twittle-twattle from c. 1550).]
1. Senseless, silly, or trifling talk or writing; empty verbosity; dull and trashy statement or discourse; empty commonplace; prosy nonsense.
1782. in Mrs. Delany’s Life & Corr., Ser. II. (1862), III. 125. Fanny Burney has taken possession of the ear of those who found their amusement in reading her twaddle (that piece of old fashioned slang I should not have dared to write or utter, within hearing of my dear mother).
1825. Scott, Jrnl., 29 Nov. A letter … quoting the twaddle of some old woman.
1851. Thackeray, Eng. Hum., v. Pouring out endless volumes of sentimental twaddle.
1878. M. C. Jackson. Chaperon’s Cares, II. xii. 145. The odious small-talk and twaddle he was compelled to hear. Ibid., xx. 243. No need to talk a lot of twaddle and nonsense to a woman with brains.
1906. Sir F. Treves, Highways Dorset, xviii. 291. He was guided by personal … experience, and not by the twaddle of theorists.
b. In extended sense: Something trashy or worthless; rubbish.
1786. Lounger (1787), II. 197. The Ton of London is mere Twaddle,… the only right Ton is to be found in Paris.
1842. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. II. Babes in Wood. Greek and Latin old twaddle I call!
† 2. (See quots. and BORE sb.2 1.) Obs. slang.
1785. European Mag., Dec., 473/2. The favourite phrases fall, and are no more, The Rage, the Thing, the Twaddle, and the Bore.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulg. Tongue, Pref. 2. The fashionable words, or favourite expressions of the day,… vanish without leaving a trace behind, such were the late fashionable words, a Bore and a Twaddle, among the great vulgar. Ibid. (1796), (ed. 3), Twaddle, perplexity, confusion, or anything else: a fashionable term that for a while succeeded that of bore.
† 3. A person who talks or writes twaddle; a twaddler. Obs.
1802. Mrs. J. West, Infidel Father, II. 100. [He] acknowledged himself to be … bored by detestable twaddles.
1813. Moore, Post-bag, ii. 29. He thinks … the imagination … Could only enter in the noddles Of dull and ledger-keeping twaddles.
1830. Macaulay, Ess., R. Montgomery’s Poems (1887), 142. A respectable and pious gentleman, whose principal fault is thai he is something of a twaddle.
a. 1838. C. Morris, Lyra Urban. (1840), II. 187. I fear I’m becoming a twaddle.
4. attrib. or adj. Of the nature of twaddle; empty and prosy; in quot. 1830, feeble.
1830. Col. Hawker, Diary (1893), II. 20. The difference between the twaddle and the vigorous in shooting.
1845. Carlyle, Cromwell (1871), V. 114. High Art paintings, gilt frames, and twaddle criticisms.
1865. Trollope, Belton Est., v. I hate the twaddle talk of love.
1889. Gretton, Memory’s Harkback, 219. Twaddle truisms instead of vital truths.
Hence (nonce-wds.) Twaddledom, the realm of twaddle, the habit of uttering twaddle; Twaddleize v., trans. to reduce to twaddle; Twaddlesome a., full of or addicted to twaddle.
1828. Standard, 18 Nov., 3/4. The whole a hubbub of every topic of twaddledom from the battle of Bunker’s Hill to the setting of a mouse-trap.
1837. Tait’s Mag., IV. 454. The *twaddledom of old age. Ibid. (1850), XVII. 547/1. Dulling his [Burns’s] humour, prosefying his poetry, and *twaddleising his vigour.
1849. Examiner, 1 Dec., 1/2. If our Government maintains a dignified impartiality in the question, the bustling sympathies of its small Pumpernichel diplomatic agents are warmly enlisted against every scheme which may endanger the existence of their *twaddlesome nothingness.
1865. Pall Mall G., 11 Nov., 10. We have here … a grim villain immensely stupid, and a comic villain of Macchiavellian astuteness contrasted with a virtuous duke immensely twaddlesome.
1898. Democrat & Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.), 22 May, 6/4. The Post Express … takes us to task in its characteristically superior, hoity toity, twaddlesome, platitudinous fashion.
