fuddy-duddy
an old-fashioned person
TRANSLATION
fuddy-duddy = altmodischer Mensch, rückständiger Mensch; kleinkarierter Mensch, alter Kauz, Nörgler, Spießer
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
“I got him interested in Aretha Franklin and John Coltrane and he in turn has downloaded Jay-Z and Lil Wayne and some of these folks so that I am you know, not a complete FUDDY DUDDY.”
U.S. President Barack Obama (talking about his personal assistant Reggie Love)
—
“At the risk of being a FUDDY DUDDY I don’t have a computer, I don’t have e-mail, and I really don’t need something in my house that I would be sitting in front of for hours.”
Marian McPartland (British jazz pianist)
Did you
know?
fuddy-duddy
colloquial noun phrase
- a person who has old-fashioned ideas and opinions
- one that is old-fashioned, unimaginative, or conservative
- a person who is fussy while old-fashioned, traditionalist, conformist or conservative, sometimes almost to the point of eccentricity or geekiness
Cambridge Dictionary / Merriam-Webster / Wikipedia
—
ORIGIN
The first record of fuddy duddy is from the Texas newspaper 'The Galveston Daily News' from 1889:
“Look here; I’m Smith - Hamilton Smith. I’m a minister and I try to do about right … I object to being represented as an old fuddy-duddy.”
That particular usage - without any accompanying explanation - seems to suggest that the readership would have been expected to have been familiar with it. There are also several citations in American newspapers from the end of the 19th century that relate to a couple called Fuddy and Duddy:
Fuddy: So Miss Dandervecken is going to marry an Englishman. A lord, I suppose?
Duddy: Well, no, not exactly: but I understand that he’s often as drunk as a lord.
The Boston Evening Transcript (November 1895)
—
SYNONYMS
- for people who are boring or old-fashioned
anachronism, antediluvian, back number, bore, bourgeois, buzzkill, Colonel Blimp, conformist, conservative, conventionalist, conventional person, crashing bore, diehard, dinosaur, dodo, dotard, drip, dull person, fogey, fogy, formalist, fossil, frump, fud, FUDDY-DUDDY, fussbudget, fusspot, fussy person, geezer, granny, has-been, mossback, Luddite, museum piece, obstinate person, old fart (fogey, geezer, maid), orthodox person, party pooper, person set in ways, reactionary, relic, saddo, sobersides, square, stick-in-the-mud, stickler, stuffed shirt, traditionalist, troglodyte, yawn
—
SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:
“Younger generations have always been able to learn useful things from the FUDDY-DUDDIES of their world."
—
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and,
Paul Smith, IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40
