Tarradiddle

Speranza

Grice's Tarradiddle

From today's World Wide Words

http://www.worldwidewords.org. World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion 2013.

It may relate to Grice's so-called "Category of Quality" (which he borrowed -- but never returned) from Kant -- if not Kantotle.

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Quinion writes:

"Not so much known now as it once was, this ["tarradiddle"] is mainly a British way of saying something is a minor lie."

 

"A contributor to Punch wrote in October 1892, “Lie, indeed! There is a middle course — say ‘fib’ or ‘tarradiddle’.”"

"These days, she lived, thought, dreamed horses, almost like Verrall himself. The time came when she not only told her taradiddle about having “hunted quite a lot”, she even came near believing it."

Burmese Days, by George Orwell, 1935.

"It has also appeared as tallydiddle and tarradiddle, a mark of people’s confusion about its origins. These are shared by modern etymologists, some of whom point uncertainly at the verb diddle, to cheat, as the source of the second element. This is recorded from the middle of the eighteenth century but they argue that it derives from the Old English dydrian, to deceive or delude. Other writers have been dismissive of this ancient etymology, mainly because, if it were true, diddle had been lurking unnoticed in the linguistic undergrowth for about seven centuries. All the experts are silent about the first element of taradiddle, which may be no more than a nonsense addition."

"This is also true of the first element of a very similar word, which musicians in particular may be reminded about — paradiddle, one of the basic patterns of drumming, consisting of four even strokes played with alternate hands. This is equally mysterious, though the second part might be from an old dialect verb meaning to shake or quiver."

"In recent decades taradiddle has taken on a divergent sense of empty talk or nonsense."

The Tarot, its origins misty until 15th-century printers got on to it, is one of those allegorical fortune-telling taradiddles beloved of fretful teenagers.
The Times, 7 Sep. 2012.

 

References

 

Grice, "Meaning Revisited", in Studies in the Way of Words.