At this point we’re well overdue for a doodle definition. After all, it’s just shy of a month since we began posting The Doodler’s Guide to Essex, NY and yet I haven’t done an adequate job of explaining exactly what I’m referring to when I speak of “doodles” and “doodling”. Sorry!

You see, the trouble is doodlers have been done a grave disservice over the years. Their craft has been repeatedly dismissed and derided. Let’s take a look at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for example.

doodle noun : 1. an aimless or casual scribble, design, or sketch; 2. a minor work
doodle verb : 1. to make a doodle; 2. dawdle, trifle

None too flattering. A casual sketch or design sounds fine to me. And I’m even okay with aimless scribbling as one of the doodle definitions. Often the best doodles are born of serendipitous, inadvertent squiggles. But I’m not terribly keen on dawdling as a synonym for doodling. It can be, I suppose, but it isn’t always. There’s definitely a pejorative edge to these definitions. A minor work? Yes, but it doesn’t pretend to be more. Why the judgment? Weird. As if doodling was subversive, maybe even dangerous…

Let’s see what the Oxford Dictionary has to offer for a doodle definition.

doodle noun : 1. a rough drawing made absentmindedly.
doodle verb : 1. scribble absentmindedly

Better. Not a slam dunk, but better.

However the OED goes on to explore the origin of derivative word “doodler”:

early 17th century (originally as a noun denoting a fool, later as a verb in the sense ‘make a fool of, cheat’): from Low German dudeltopf, dudeldopp ‘simpleton’. Current senses date from the 1930s

Ouch! I’m not an etymologist, nor am I qualified to debunk this historical perspective.Especially because it is corroborated elsewhere. According to open source word wizard Wiktionary history has well established that doodles are simple fools.

The word doodle first appeared in the early 17th century to mean a fool or simpleton… The meaning “fool, simpleton” is intended in the song title “Yankee Doodle”, originally sung by British colonial troops prior to the American Revolutionary War. This is also the origin of the early eighteenth century verb to doodle, meaning “to swindle or to make a fool of”. The modern meaning emerged in the 1930s either from this meaning or from the verb “to dawdle”, which since the seventeenth century has had the meaning of wasting time or being lazy.

I won’t try to buck history, but I believe that it’s time to reevaluate the merits of doodling and [hopefully] develop a better (and considerably more favorable) doodle definition. Personally, I lean toward a flattering, ample, and inclusive doodle definition, one altogether at odds with the conventional wisdom which more or less suggests that doodling is aimless scrawl and/or frittering away time.

Related articles

• How do you doodle, Essex? (www.essexonlakechamplain.com)
• Why Doodling Matters? (nstp1upse.wordpress.com)
• “I Draw Pictures All Day” (smashingmagazine.com)
• Subconscious Doodling (sidhere.com)
• Why you should doodle in meetings (cbsnews.com)
• Doodle? Wikipedia reveal all! (kinkychinkecreations.com)
• A Yankee Doodler (dyingbraincells.wordpress.com)