Fuddy-duddy

//ˈfʌdiˌdʌdi// adj, noun, slang

adj, noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An old-fashioned, persnickety or ineffective person. US, informal

    "My grandma is a fuddy-duddy when it comes to keeping her house clean."

  2. 2
    a conservative who is old-fashioned or dull in attitude or appearance wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Old-fashioned and persnickety or ineffective. US, informal

    "Kingsolver lives by the tenets of her public-spirited fictional characters, whom she sculpts with a keen eye for individuality, e.g. Nannie Land Rawley, a seventy-something orchardist who shocks a fuddy-duddy male neighbor by wearing shorts, […]"

Example

More examples

"My uncle is a fuddy-duddy who thinks life was better back in the 1950s."

Etymology

Unknown. First attested in the US circa 1900.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.