fuddy-duddy
Americannoun
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a person who is stuffy, old-fashioned, and conservative.
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a person who is fussy or picayune about details; fussbudget.
adjective
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stuffy, old-fashioned, and conservative.
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fussy; picayune.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of fuddy-duddy
First recorded in 1900–05; of obscure origin
Explanation
An old-fashioned, fussy person can be called a fuddy-duddy. You might accuse your best friend of being a fuddy-duddy if she prefers staying home drinking tea and reading on Saturday nights, instead of going dancing with you. A fuddy-duddy has no sense of humor and is disapproving and a bit pompous. Fuddy-duddies seem dull and conservative, overly careful, and critical of other people's decisions. While we know fuddy-duddy first appeared in print in the late 1800s, and that it originated in the United States, its origin is a mystery.
Vocabulary lists containing fuddy-duddy
O'Reilly's Lexicon of Epithets
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A Wind in the Door
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Bob Newhart (1929–2024) Tribute List
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He’s a fuddy-duddy, and he only makes it worse his habit of making bad jokes and then reacting petulantly when people don’t laugh at them.
From Salon ● Jun. 15, 2026
Few Britons now recoil at the prospect of King Charles III, even if he sometimes seems more a fuddy-duddy uncle than a national patriarch.
From New York Times ● Sep. 8, 2022
Showing the BBC around his former stomping ground, Harold's Café, he expressed confidence his cardigan-wearing "fuddy-duddy" character would live on.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2022
Dream movie moment: Cora, who sometimes seems a few scones short of a tea tray, wises up and leaves fuddy-duddy Robert for a dashing London financier played by Hugh Grant.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 10, 2019
You can lead your class all you want to with your silk-lined manners and your fuddy-duddy book-talk!
From The White Linen Nurse by Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell
We tend to think of people from long ago as credulous, unsophisticated fuddy-duddies.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 13, 2021
In the Spiel, why the Dow is for fuddy-duddies.
From Slate ● Aug. 7, 2017
Even more startling, some of the fuddy-duddies in traditional media turn out to have a bigger millennial audience than Vice — including, uh, The New York Times, Mr. McDermott said..
From New York Times ● Oct. 10, 2014
English Heritage objected, but who cared about the complaints of culturally conservative fuddy-duddies?
From The Guardian ● Aug. 19, 2011
There are some fuddy-duddies and politicians among them, but most of them are on the job every minute.
From The U-boat hunters by Connolly, James B. (James Brendan)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
