dawdle v.

"jackdaw, small sort of crow," early 15c., daue, perhaps from an unrecorded Old English *dawe, from Proto-Germanic *dakhwo (source also of Old High German taha, German Dohle), perhaps imitative of bird's cry. Medieval Latin tacula, Italian taccola are said to be Germanic loan words.

"idling, wasting of time," by 1819, verbal noun from dawdle (v.).

"scrawl aimlessly," 1935, perhaps from dialectal doodle, dudle "fritter away time, trifle," or associated with dawdle (which might be the source of the dialect word). It also was a noun meaning "simple fellow" from 1620s.

LONGFELLOW: That's a name we made up back home for people who make foolish designs on paper when they're thinking. It's called doodling. Almost everybody's a doodler. Did you ever see a scratch pad in a telephone booth? People draw the most idiotic pictures when they're thinking. Dr. Von Holler, here, could probably think up a long name for it, because he doodles all the time. ["Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," screenplay by Robert Riskin, 1936; based on "Opera Hat," serialized in American Magazine beginning May 1935, by Clarence Aldington Kelland]

Related: Doodled; Doodling.

Doodle Sack. A bagpipe. Dutch. — Also the private parts of a woman. ["Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," 1796]