A silly, insignificant fool. A genuinely old and now obsolete insult, built from two older words for a fool.
What it really means
A fopdoodle is a fool — specifically a silly, rather insignificant one — and the word is built with a certain lack of restraint.
It is two insults glued together. A fop was a vain, foolish man. A doodle, from the 1620s, was a simpleton. A fopdoodle, therefore, is a fool who is also a fool. Saying it twice was the point.
It is real, and it is genuinely old. The OED carries it with the dagger it uses for words that have died, and when J. O. Halliwell compiled his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words in 1847, he was already collecting it as a relic: FOPDOODLE. A silly fellow.
The doodle has relatives. It is the same doodle inside flapdoodle, the food of fools, and the word itself later wandered into a completely different meaning — the aimless scribble — which is its only form most people use today.
As an insult, fopdoodle has one real advantage over the harsher words around it on this list. It is impossible to say angrily. By the time you reach the second half, everyone is laughing, including, usually, the fopdoodle.
Where it comes from
Two insults stacked into one. It says the same thing twice, which is part of the joke.
Myths & misconceptions
Fopdoodle is a modern joke word.
It is genuinely old. The OED lists it as an obsolete entry, and Halliwell was collecting it as an archaic word in 1847.
How it connects
- Coxcombthe fop's other name — the vain man, where the fopdoodle is merely the silly one.
- Flapdoodleshares its doodle.
Questions people ask
- Is fopdoodle a real word?
- Yes. It is recorded in the OED as obsolete, and in Halliwell's 1847 dictionary of archaic words as 'a silly fellow'.