Hoddydoddy
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 An awkward or foolish person. obsolete
"Well, good wife bawd, Cob’s wife, and you / That make your husband such a hoddy-doddy ; / And you, young apple-squire, and old cuckold-maker"
- 2 A snail; a snail’s shell. England, obsolete
"A River snail in Oxfordshire is “Hoddy-doddy”; in Northamptonshire the Wall snail is “Packman snail.”"
Example
More examples"Well, good wife bawd, Cob’s wife, and you / That make your husband such a hoddy-doddy ; / And you, young apple-squire, and old cuckold-maker"
Etymology
From hoddy-dod, an obsolete English regionalism meaning “periwinkle” or “snail”. Compare dodman.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.