doddle

plural doddles · alternative dawdle

1. AustraliaIrelandNew ZealandUKinformalA job, task, or other activity that is easy to complete or simple.

   Centurion: Have you ever seen anyone crucified? Matthias: Crucifixion's a doddle.

   1979, Monty Python's Life of Brian

   3 more examples

   [Dr Bullard]'s on his hols. I'm standing in. Anyway, this one's a doddle. Death by strangulation, about five or six days ago at a guess.

   1999 February 3, Anthony Horowitz, “Strangler's Wood”, in Midsomer Murders

   Retailing in Europe's biggest economy, with 82m mostly well-off people, may sound a doddle. It is not.

   2002 September 14, “KarstadtQuelle: Below par”, in The Economist

   He was a QC from Edinburgh, wearing the black jacket and pinstripe trousers of his trade, as if straight from court, and probably persuaded to come in the belief that if you could interest the Budhill and Springboig party in the repressive Gaullist policies in Algeria then becoming Solicitor-General was a dawdle.

   2009, Archie Macpherson, “Thumping the Tub”, in A Game of Two Halves: The Autobiography, Edinburgh: Black & White Publishing, →ISBN, page 63

   Synonyms: bagatelle, waltz, walk, breeze, cake and gingerbread, cakewalk, child's play, cinch

present singular third person doddles · participle present doddling · participle past doddled · past doddled

1. To dodder.

   […] a doddling old grandfather to act as sheep-dog, as a toothless, barkless, harmless guardian.

   1874, Sir Francis Cowley Burnand, My Time, and what I've Done with it: An Autobiography, page 369

2. misspellingMisspelling of dawdle.

   Usually we doddled, stopping to flush quail or dove for dinner, skeet-shooting our beer bottles, and watering the cacti.

   2004, Katie Lee, Sandstone Seduction: Rivers and Lovers, Canyons and Friends

plural doddles

1. A hornless animal; a pollard or doddy.