twaddle

plural twaddles · alternative twoddle

1. uncountableEmpty or silly idle talk or writing; nonsense, rubbish.First known use 1782.

   You're talking a load of twaddle. Get your facts straight, man!

   5 more examples

   Still, being unfortunate enough to belong to that small but respectable minority who regard Mr. Tupper's versicular philosophy as superficial and conceited twaddle,—as a new manifestation to these latter days of weakness and sentimentalism under the solemn form of the Oracular,[…].

   1858 July 28, “Charlatan Poetry: Martin Farquhar Tupper”, in The National Review, volume 7, number 13, page 162

   "What ineffable twaddle!" I cried, slapping the magazine down on the table; "I never read such rubbish in my life."

   1887, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock & Co., part I (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., […]), chapter II (The Science of Deduction), page 12

   I would rather be rude than to listen to twaddle from a man I’ve known.

   1907 April, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, The Longest Journey, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, part II (Sawston), page 226

   It was her other self who had written that letter. It not only bored, it rather disgusted her real self. "Flippant and silly," said her real self. Yet she knew that she'd send it and she'd always write that kind of twaddle to Nan Pym.

   1918 June, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Prelude”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, →OCLC, chapter 12, page 66

   I improvised for three or four minutes, speaking complete twaddle in character.

   2025 October 28, Arifa Akbar, quoting Meera Syal, “‘I spoke complete twaddle for four minutes’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and more on the terror of stage fright”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: babble, bavardage, bibble-babble, blab, blabber, blabbing, blather, blathering

2. countableOne who twaddles; a twaddler.

present singular third person twaddles · participle present twaddling · participle past twaddled · past twaddled · alternative twoddle

1. To talk or write nonsense; to prattle.

   To Edward […] he was terrible, nerve-inflaming, poisonously asphyxiating. He sat rocking himself in the late Mr. Churchill's swing chair, smoking and twaddling.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 181

plural Twaddles

1. A surname.