scribbledehobblen.
/ˈskrɪbldɪˌhɒbl/, U.S. /ˈskrɪb(ə)ldiˌhɑb(ə)l/ A term probably coined by James Joyce, which appears as the first entry in one of his notebooks for Finnegans Wake, and later in the novel itself (see note). Hence, with capital initial and sometimes with the: (the name of) this notebook. Also attributive, in scribbledehobble book (also notebook).The precise meaning of the word, as used by Joyce, is unclear. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce substitutes scribbledehobble for an earlier instance of scribbledehoy, used with reference to schoolchildren working at their lessons (cf. hobbledehoy n. 1a and etymology).
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society > communication > writing > written text > [noun] > a scribble or scrawl > nonce-formation for scribble, Joyce's notebook
scribbledehobble1931
1931 J. Joyce Notebk. in T. E. Connoly James Joyce's Scribbledehobble (1961) 5 Scribbledehobble..I'm feeling so funny all over the same.
1939 J. Joyce Finnegans Wake ii. 275 That royal pair..have discusst..why lui lied to lei and hun tried to kill ham, scribbledehobbles, in whose veins runs a mixture of, are head bent and hard upon.
1961 Times Lit. Suppl. 20 Oct. 754/3 Of the fifty Finnegans Wake notebooks now in the Lockwood Memorial Library the Scribbledehobble book is the largest... It contains words, phrases, clichés, anecdotes, ideas, scraps of information and other memoranda.
1963 D. Hayman First-draft Version of Finnegans Wake 26 I do not mean by this that Joyce had abandoned the ideas previously developed in the Scribbledehobble and the early sketches.
1988 R. G. Hampson in P. L. Caracciolo Arabian Nights in Eng. Lit. ix. 242 Another entry in Scribbledehobble suggests Joyce's detailed knowledge of ‘The Hunchback's Tale’.
2001 James Joyce Q. 38 143 Joyce found the material..that he had entered on the Exiles page of the Scribbledehobble notebook just before he began to write the sketches.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2018; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1931