Saturday, July 19, 2008

Taradiddle

The other morning I made my regular morning call to my Dad and he said "I have a word for you." He disappeared for a moment and returned to the phone and said 'taradiddle.' Then he spelled it. He found it while reading "Out of Africa." I looked it up (online, of course) and found:

taradiddle
1. a trivial lie;
2. pretentious or silly talk or writing

This seemed funny and appropriate to me somehow.

And I think it is a tribute to my dad that he is still finding words he doesn't know in books he's reading. That's probably the reason he's lived as long (and as independent) a life as he has.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Taradiddle is a kind of drum roll or flourish that I learned in my high school band. It probably came from military band-speak. It can also be applied to drumming errors, in a sarcastic way, as in, "I don't think that taradiddle is in the sheet music."