Noun: canoodle
| Singular | canoodle |
| Plural | canoodles |
Sample Sentences
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She got on with the crewmen, all of whom liked her and at least one of whom, Pinky Montmorency, took more than a casual interest in her. Probably a bit of a canoodle now and then in the room behind the office. [1980, Peter De Vries, chapter 1, in Consenting Adults or The Duchess will be Furious […], Boston, Mass.; Toronto, Ont.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 6:]
Nouns inflected like canoodle
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. The origin of the verb is uncertain; the following possibilities have been suggested:
2. * From a blend of ca(ress) + noodle (“to engage in frivolous behavior; to fool around or waste time; to mess around, to play”).
3. * From German knuddeln (“to cuddle; (originally) to embrace tightly”); or related to Low German knuddle (“a clump, a knot”), a diminutive of knude, related to Old High German knodo, knoto (“a knot”) (modern German Knoten (“knot”)); ultimate etymology unknown. Compare also Norwegian Bokmål knulle (“to fuck”), Swedish knulla (“to fuck”), both from Proto-Germanic *knuzlijaną (“to beat; to mash”) (and also compare the semantics of the Scandinavian cognates of fuck).
4. The noun is probably derived from the verb. See: German Nouns '
Knoten'.