Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A petty falsehood; a fib.
- noun Silly pretentious speech or writing; twaddle.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A fictitious account; a fib.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A trivial
lie . - noun Silly talk or writing;
humbug .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun pretentious or silly talk or writing
- noun a trivial lie
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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‘There is to be a little tarradiddle told, and I am to tell it?’
John Caldigate 2004
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O Lady Lufton! have you not written a tarradiddle to your friend?
Framley Parsonage 2004
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But I wasn't fooled by that tarradiddle about the cold.
The Silicon Mage Hambly, Barbara 1988
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The tarradiddle was not entirely lucid, since his attempts at the Spanish-Italian argot of the island consisted in speaking very loudly in pidgin-English and adding an ‘a’ after arbitrarily chosen syllables.
Tour de Force Brand, Christianna, 1907- 1955
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He abandoned the tarradiddle and to the measureless astonishment of the shopkeeper threw himself into an impersonation of Miss Trapp.
Tour de Force Brand, Christianna, 1907- 1955
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He left Rodd on guard over his wife and went down to the shop, full of a tarradiddle about an Inglese who had recommended him to buy a similar knife to one purchased that day.
Tour de Force Brand, Christianna, 1907- 1955
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As an example of how anything can be twisted to make mischief, I may quote here an absurd tarradiddle about Mrs. Kendal never forgetting in after years that in the Bristol stock company she had to play the singing fairy to my Titania in “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”
The Story of My Life Terry, Ellen, Dame, 1847-1928 1908
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This may quite easily be (to begin with) an entertaining tarradiddle of Sam's own invention, told, like many other even more improbable stories, solely to amuse Mr. Pickwick.
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In vain Kettle pleaded "fo 'Gord --" always a forerunner of a tarradiddle -- that he "didn't have no notion on the blessed yearth as Miss Betty would mind," and also wept copiously when Mrs. Fortescue frankly told him that he was a tarradiddler, and made, for the hundredth time, a very awful threat to Kettle.
Betty at Fort Blizzard Molly Elliot Seawell 1888
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A tarradiddle is what you say when you are, so to speak, took by surprise.
Girls of the Forest L. T. Meade 1884
jay.dugger commented on the word tarradiddle
# fib: a trivial lie; "he told a fib about eating his spinach"; "how can I stop my child from telling stories?"
# baloney: pretentious or silly talk or writing
June 15, 2007
bilby commented on the word tarradiddle
"Mr B did not tell a whopper. This was no fib, plumper, porker or tarradiddle. There was definitely no deceit, mendacity or fabrication."
- 'Looking Back', Western Mail, 11 May 2002.
December 6, 2007
pheiticeira commented on the word tarradiddle
way to take the word from word of the day M-W.
December 6, 2007
bilby commented on the word tarradiddle
Oddly enough, I flagged tarradiddle for one of my lists before it appeared in my email today. True dinks.
December 6, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word tarradiddle
I wonder where the hell this word came from. It sounds just like paradiddle, which as silly words go, at least makes some kind of sense. Hm.
December 6, 2007
reesetee commented on the word tarradiddle
What's wrong with adding a word from a Word of the Day list, pheiticeira? I don't use the Merriam Webster list, but there are others I subscribe to, and I've added a few WODs here. :-)
December 6, 2007