In Australian (and American and New Zealand) slang a ‘dingbat’ is someone who is wildly irrational or eccentric; one who is foolish or stupid.’
We have been using the word in this way since the late 1800s.
According to the Oxford ‘dingbat’ has a longer history than that and has had many meanings over the years.
For instance, there’s a quote from 1843 that refers to ‘a fair game of ding bats.’
So, what was that like? Skittles? Possibly.
The word suggests it involved knocking something down with something else.
I won’t go through all the other possible meanings—there are too many of them, and they are so varied and inconsistent it’s hard to see how there can be any connection between them.
As just one example, in the early 1800s in America a ‘dingbat’ was an alcoholic drink—and the Oxford suggests ‘a very strong one.’
Printers also use the word ‘dingbats’ for ornamental characters used in typesetting—something (says the Oxford) ‘other than a letter or numeral (such as an asterisk or symbol), used… to replace letters in a euphemistically presented vulgar word, or for ornamentation.’
The sense of a stupid or crazy person starts to appear in both Australia and America around the 1870s or 1880s, laying the foundation for Archie Bunker’s affectionate nickname for his wife Edith in the American TV show All In the Family.
Where does it come from? Well, it incorporates two verbal components: ‘ding’ meaning a hit or punch and ‘bat’ meaning either the action of beating or striking or the object with which you do the beating or striking.
So, perhaps using ‘dingbat’ to mean a halfwit comes from the notion that a person has had a few too many blows around the head and can no longer think straight.
It reminds me of the joke by P. G. Wodehouse (which he repeated in many stories). When someone is behaving in a foolish way one of the characters is sure to remark ‘Must have been dropped on his head as a baby.’
Well, I suggest that ‘dingbat is the same sort of jocular expression.
Which doesn’t explain why printers’ symbols (*^#>! +#) are called dingbats.
Is it because only someone who was completely dingbats could have designed them?
I have no idea (well, we can’t explain everything).
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The May-June issue of Australian Geographic is out now (with the tree frog on the cover) -- inside are my two small columns on 'Placenames' and 'Ozwords'.
If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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