boondoggle

UK/ˈbuːndɒɡl̩//ˈbundɑɡəl/

boondoggle noun: a braided ring to hold a neckerchief.

Noun

boondoggle (plural boondoggles)

(especially scouting) A braided ring to hold a neckerchief.

Synonyms:

woggle
(Canada, US, figuratively, usually) A waste of time or money; a pointless activity.
- Opponents consider this another billion-dollar government boondoggle.
- Senator John Stennis […] has been active and effective for so long as a member of the Armed Services Committee that he knows as well as any man can where the bodies are buried in the Pentagon and the boondoggles are buried in the defense budget.1972 September 19, Tom Wicker, “In the Nation”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 13 Oct 2022, retrieved 13 Aug 2018
A trip or journey, especially a recreational or otherwise desirable one.
- By its strictest definition, a boondoggle is a recreational trip out of town, but it has been blurred by threadbare jokes to mean any trip that is desirable, whether for work or not.2005, Nicholas Johnson, “Chapter 3 Notes”, in Big Dead Place, →ISBN
- I could die on this boondoggle too, naturally, as the world has become something of a horror show of late. In any case, I trust that anybody following in my footsteps and reading these additional words will have the presence of mind to pursue the same basic strategy.2017 May 4, qntm, “SCP-3125”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 12 Mar 2026
1. (slang, Antarctica) A non-work trip away from a research station.
  - A non-work excursion away from the station in US Antarctic English is a “boondoggle”, or a “jolly” for the Britons.2024 June 20, Eva Corlett, “Fidlets, fingies and riding a doo: study sheds light on Antarctic English slang”, in The Guardian

Verb

boondoggle (third-person singular simple present boondoggles, present participle boondoggling, simple past and past participle boondoggled)

(intransitive) To waste time on a pointless activity.
- These days the astronaut job title has been split into two categories. (Three, counting payload specialist, the category into which teachers, boondoggling senators, and junketing Saudi princes fall.)2010, Mary Roach, “He's Smart But His Birds Are Sloppy: Japan Picks an Astronaut”, in Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 28

boondoggle meaning in Tamil and Urdu

Synonyms of boondoggle

woggle

Forms of boondoggle

Noun
plural	boondoggles
Verb
third-person singular present	boondoggles
present participle	boondoggling
past participle	boondoggled
past	boondoggled

Origin of boondoggle

Coined by American scout leader Robert H. Link in 1929; alternatively “boon doggle”. Compare woggle of similar sense, which is attested in the same period. In the sense of a “wasteful government program”, popularized in 1935 by The New York Times, in reference to New Deal programs which were claimed to feature people making such braids.

Words formed from boondoggle

Questions about boondoggle

What does boondoggle mean?: Boondoggle means a braided ring to hold a neckerchief.
What is boondoggle in Tamil?: Boondoggle in Tamil is தேவையற்ற செலவு, பாழ்திட்டம். See Boondoggle meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is boondoggle?: Boondoggle can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce boondoggle?: Boondoggle is pronounced /ˈbuːndɒɡl̩/ (UK).
What is the plural of boondoggle?: The plural of boondoggle is boondoggles.

Words near boondoggle in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: boondoggle (page history and authors); boondoggle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); boondoggle (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-boondoggle.ogg.

Cite this entry: “boondoggle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boondoggle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.