Meanings
plural snickerdoodles
- USA cookie in which the batter is rolled into a ball and coated with cinnamon sugar.
2006, Kris Nelscott, War at Home, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 22, I took a bite from the snickerdoodle. It was fresh and soft and tasted like childhood.
2 more examples
1967, Paul Henry Oehser (ed.), The United States Encyclopedia of History, Curtis Books, page 382, Besides bread, the bakehouse also turned out such treats as gristmill graham, hobnail, lumberjack, and snickerdoodle cookies in New England; and corn pone, spoon bread, and hominy pudding in the South.
1991, Daranna Gidel, Ceremony of Innocence, Dutton, →ISBN, page 345, Then, one morning, after making twenty dozen snickerdoodle cookies for an upcoming church function, Wanda collapsed onto the kitchen’s sparking vinyl floor and died.
Origin
The earliest known use is from 1889. Possibly a fanciful coinage, from snicker + doodle (“doodlebug”; though without clear semantic connection to either word). An alternative etymology derives it from (Palatinate) German Schneckennudel, Scheckennurel, Schleckenuʳʳl (with variants in other dialects, such as in Swabia and Saarland), also a round type of pastry, but formed from dough rolled up in a coil. However, these words do not appear to have surfaced in 19th-century American English, and early attestations of snickerdoodle do not suggest a German-American connection. A Dutch origin has also been surmised, based off semantics (see cookie) and similar-sounding words (see snickersnee).
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
snickerdoodle. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/snickerdoodle
“snickerdoodle.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/snickerdoodle. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “snickerdoodle,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/snickerdoodle.
Source: snickerdoodle on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.