Quinion has an interesting note on the word twaddle.
quote:
But it turns out that Mrs Delany just meant that the word was impolite, not obscene. It’s a variant of an older word, twattle, which has mainly been dialectal and hasn’t been recorded much in print. That meant to talk foolishly or idly or to chatter inanely. A twattle-basket was a chatterbox. It seems to have been itself a variation on tattle, as in tittle-tattle, another of those many reduplicated terms that English is so fond of, which has also been written as twittle-twattle.
In 1782, she about an author of the period: “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).”
Later, he says:
quote:
My guess is that Janet Street-Porter and Simon Mayo knew about the link with twattle and made the unreasonable assumption that it had a direct link with twat for a woman’s genitals, a low slang term dating from the seventeenth century, whose origin is unknown.
Fanny is also slang for the same area ...
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!
Hence twaddlesomea., full of or addicted to twaddle; also (nonce-wds.) twaddledom, the realm of twaddle, the habit of uttering twaddle; twaddleize v., trans. to reduce to twaddle.
1837Tait's Mag. IV. 454 The *twaddledom of old age. 1850Ibid. XVII. 547/1 Dulling his [Burns's] humour, prosefying his poetry, and *twaddleising his vigour. 1865Pall Mall G. 11 Nov. 10 A grim villain immensely stupid, and..a virtuous duke immensely *twaddlesome. 1892 G. MEREDITH Let. 25 Apr. (1970) II. 1080 Dorothy Penrose, an enormous bulk, is uninterruptedly twaddlesome. 1966 K. S. SORABJI in ‘H. MacDiarmid’ Company I've Kept ii. 65 The twaddlesome sentimentalities about trusting the ultimate judgement and good sense of the public.
I don't much care for twaddleize, but I like twaddlesome and twaddledom. I've had twaddlesome conversations with people who seem to live in twaddledom. Of course, they may have thought the same thing about me.
Twaddledom. That would be a great name for forum. The members could all twaddleize. One thing about Wordcraft...I learn something new every day.
quote:
My guess is that Janet Street-Porter and Simon Mayo knew about the link with twattle and made the unreasonable assumption that it had a direct link with twat for a woman’s genitals, a low slang term dating from the seventeenth century, whose origin is unknown.
I am not sure how "unreasonable" it is. After all, the origin of "twat" is unknown.
