The word “flibbertigibbet” is a cute label for somebody who tends to fly foolishly from one thing to another, or to chatter on nonsensically. It sort of seems like a frivolous word, and it even sounds like something that might have been coined in the late 1800s or so, doesn’t it?
Surprisingly enough (that means it was enough to surprise me, of course) “flibbertigibbet” has been in use since at least 1549. For the most part it’s kept the same meaning the whole time, but some writers have used it slightly differently. Sir Walter Scott used it as a name for a character (an impish child) in his 1821 novel Kenilworth. He might have been inspired by Shakespeare, who wrote in King Lear (1605) about “The foule Flibbertigibbet … hurts the poore Creature of earth.” Shakespeare’s Flibbertigibbet was a demon.
Shakespeare also contributed to the way we spell “flibbertigibbet.” Before King Lear there were all sorts of variations, from “flybbergybe” to “flebergebet” to “flibber de jibb,” but after Shakespeare’s use, everyone seemed to agree that “flibbertigibbet” was the way to go.
Nobody knows where “flibbertigibbet” came from, but it does pretty much sound like silly chatter, so it might simply have been made up to mimic the sound of what it was describing. Besides, “flibbertigibbet” is kind of fun to say. It seems to be fading from use lately; maybe we’re just getting too serious nowadays to want to use words that are fun to say. Like, for example, “oodles,” as in “she wasn’t just well off; she had oodles of cash!”
“Oodles” appeared in the 1860s, and there are several ideas about where it came from. One possibility is that it came from “scadoodles,” which was also slang for “a whole lot” around the same time, “Scad” also means the same thing. The problem with this theory is that it just moves the target; if “oodles” came from “scadoodle,” where did “scadoodle” (or for that matter, “scad”) come from? Nobody has a clue.
Another possible origin of “oodles” is the older phrase “kit and kaboodle,” which means “everything” as in “they moved out, taking the whole kit and kaboodle with them.” The “kit” here is an old word meaning “collection” —it’s the same “kit”as in “my old kit bag,” and is also found in “model-building kit.” But how about “kaboodle”?
“Kaboodle,” as well as “oodle” and “scadoodle,” might come from “boodle.. That was a real, non-slang word for about a century when the other “-oodle” variations appeared. It meant “estate” — the totality of possessions a person left behind after death, not the estate in the country with a big house and enormous lawns.
But whatever. the real origins of all these oodles of “oodle” words (as well as some others like “boocoodles,” which is regional slang from the southern US) everybody can have fun flibbertigibbeting around saying “oodle” as much as they like. As long as they’re not too serious, that is.
