1629 J. Ford Lovers Melancholy iii. 39 Vanish, Doodles, Vanish.

1764 S. Foote Mayor of Garret ii. 42 Why, doodle; jackanapes; harkee who am I?

1845 R. Cobden Speeches (1872) 179 The Noodles and Doodles of the aristocracy.

1887 Harper's Mag. July 276/1 She wondered how the nice, fat little round ‘doodles’ were getting on in their tin can under the house; she never had had such a fine box of bait.

1939 These are our Lives (Federal Writers' Project, U.S.) 157 They not knowing any more than a doodle in the woods what she was saying.

1937 R. M. Arundel Everybody's Pixillated p. ix A ‘doodle’ is a scribbling or sketch made while the conscious mind is concerned with matters wholely unrelated to the scribbling.

1938 Life 14 Nov. 7/2 It's a doodle picture. I've seen it dozens of times on telephone pads and what not.

1942 Punch 25 Feb. 158/1 Mr. Clement Attlee, the Premier's deputy, industriously drew doodles of intricate pattern.

1947 W. H. Auden Age of Anxiety (1948) i. 25 On memories stuffed With dead men's doodles.

1956 H. Gardner Limits Lit. Crit. ii. 34 When a writer's first drafts, scraps of memoranda, and ‘doodles’ have been preserved, we may possibly have a limited success in tracing the workings of the creative imagination.

1961 Times 23 Nov. 15/2 Mr. Gwyn Thomas lets a witty pen run doodlingly on.

1970 H. Braun Parish Churches xviii. 219 Geometrical ‘doodles’ made with a mason's compasses are medieval.

1823 W. T. Moncrieff Tom & Jerry i. vii. (Farmer) I have been dished and doodled out of forty pounds to-day.

1836 M. Scott Cruise of Midge xxi. 390 It might have doodled our whole party.

1880 M. A. Courtney W. Cornwall Words in M. A. Courtney & T. Q. Couch Gloss. Words Cornwall Doodle, to cheat; to deceive; to trifle.

1937 Literary Digest 26 June 19/3 ‘But everybody doodles.’ So Gary Cooper, as Longfellow Deeds, in ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town’, defended himself. He wasn't crazy because he drew squares and circles on scraps of paper —he was just ‘doodling’.

1948 ‘J. Tey’ Franchise Affair xviii. 217 Robert sat doodling on..blotting-paper. A herring-bone pattern.

1955 H. Spring These Lovers fled Away iv. 128 When we had changed from a main line train and were doodling across country.

1967 New Scientist 12 Oct. 102/1 At boring committee meetings, in common with others who doodle, I can escape with relief into the insulated world of mathematical abstraction.

1846 Cornish Prov. Dial. 55 ‘None of thy doodling, thee bean't St. George, no more than me.’

1937 Manch. Guardian 5 May 8/4 Doodling is fidgeting about pictorially with a pen or pencil at odd moments to pass the time... In Australia..[caterers] have provided special menu cards with plenty of space on them in the hope of luring doodlers into doodling on these instead of on the tablecloth.

1944 Times 17 Mar. 5/4 It is nevertheless a thrill to the humble ‘doodling’ addict to discover that Marshal Stalin himself is of the brotherhood.

1953 C. Day Lewis Ital. Visit iii. 39 Lightning sketches, Symbolic doodlings, hour by hour set down Haphazardly.

1951 E. Mittelholzer Shadows move among Them iii. viii. 326 He left it a doodled smear on the Penguin.

1960 20th Cent. Mar. 233 Poetry is not the free unfettered self-expression of the doodler.

1816 W. Scott Old Mortality iv, in Tales of my Landlord 1st Ser. II. 72 I am wearied wi' doudling the bag o' wind a' day.

1824 W. Scott Redgauntlet I. xi. 253 ‘Thou sack-doudling son of a whore!’

a1846 Sir G. Head in Worcester Doodle-sack.

1847–78 J. O. Halliwell Dict. Archaic & Provinc. Words Doodle-sack, a bag-pipe. Kent.