DOODLE

A 'doodle' is a type of sketch, an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied.

Contents

Etymology

Famous Doodlers

See also

External links

Etymology

The word ''doodle'' first appeared in the early seventeenth century to mean a fool or simpleton, and is thought to derive from the Low German ''dudeltopf'', meaning "fool" or "simpleton". This is the origin of the early eighteenth century verb ''to doodle'', meaning "to swindle or to make a fool of". The modern meaning emerged in the 1930s either from this meaning or from the verb "to dawdle", which since the seventeenth century has had the meaning of wasting time or being lazy.
In the movie "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" Mr. Deeds mentions that "doodle" was a word made up to describe scribblings to help a person think.

Famous Doodlers

In published compilations of their materials, numerous historical figures have left behind doodles. Erasmus drew comical faces in the margins of his manuscripts and John Keats drew flowers in his medical note-books during lectures. Ralph Waldo Emerson, as a student at Harvard, decorated his composition books with somber, classical doodles, such as ornamental scrolls. In one place, he sketched a man whose feet have been bitten off by a great fish swimming nearby and added the caption, “My feet are gone. I am a fish. Yes, I am a fish!”
One famous doodler is Sergio Aragonés, who has doodled cartoons in the margins of over 400 issues of MAD Magazine.

See also

★ Marginalia

★ Graphology

★ Alien hand syndrome

★ Automatic writing

★ Split-brain

★ Stream of consciousness writing

★ Scribble

★ Oekaki

★ Yankee Doodle

External links

★ Doodles made by Presidents of the United States

★ CBBC children's doodle games

★ UK-based charity fundraising event where celebrities' doodles are auctioned