If you’re not sure what to have for breakfast — waffles with syrup or waffles with whipped cream — and you go back and forth, you might be waffling about waffles. You could also wax lexiphanic about your choice, eloquently and loquaciously holding forth about how it feels to be caught between two options and unable to choose one. And then you’d be waffling about waffling about waffles.
“Waffles” means three different things. The most common use of the word come from the Dutch word “wafel.” It means “wafer,” and entered Middle English as “wafre” or “wafell” in the late 1200s. It appears that up until the 1800s a waffle was typically crispier and more like a wafer, or cookie than they are today, and the words “waffle” and “wafer” were used somewhat interchangeably. In the US, “waffle” seems to have always meant the soft, breakfasty kind.
The second way “waffle” is used is to mean equivocating or vacillating among options without making a choice. This usage only arose around 1800 or so, and by 1894 was defined in Northumberland Words as “to waft about, to waver, to walk hesitatingly, to act with indecision.” This meaning of “waffle” used to be common throughout English-speaking areas, but is now used much more in the US than in England.
The third meaning of “waffle” is common in England but has died out in the US. This one means talking or writing verbosely without making much of a point. Rambling on, in other words. John Stephen Farmer’s Public School Word-Book from 1900 simply explained that to waffle was “to talk nonsense.”
There used to be a fourth kind of “waffle.” That one came from the archaic “waff,” which is exactly the same as the modern “woof.” What a dog says. If you were to “waff,” back in the 1500s, you were yelping like a puppy. This “waffle” is just the “frequentive version” of “waff.” It’s the same as “waddle” originally came from “wade,” to walk through water like a duck. It’s a shame this version of “waffle” disappeared more than a century ago; otherwise you could come to your senses and give a loud shout about your own rambling about not being able to choose your breakfast, and you’d be waffling about waffling about waffling about waffles!
