canoodling
canoodling is the present participle and gerund of canoodle.
Meaning of canoodle
Verb
canoodle (third-person singular simple present canoodles, present participle canoodling, simple past and past participle canoodled)
- To caress, fondle, or pet (someone); also, to have sexual intercourse with (someone); to make love with.
- He’s got a big smile on his face—who’s he been canoodling recently?
- To cajole or persuade (someone).
- “There,” she cried triumphantly, when her labours were finished, “it [the drawing-room] looks different now, really quite effective and ‘canoodling’.”[1877, Anna C. Steele, chapter XXI, in Condoned. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 243
- Synonyms:
- coax, inveigle, sweet-talk, wheedle, blandander, blandish, butter up, cajole, sweeten, fast-talk
- Of a person: to caress, fondle, or pet another person; of two people: to caress, fondle, or pet each other; also, to have sexual intercourse; to make love.
- Young Robin and my daughter. / ‘Canoodling’ too. This must lead to manslaughter.[1874], Charles Millward, The Grand Annual Comic Christmas Pantomime Entitled, Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross: […], Birmingham: […] Theatre Royal Printing Works, →OCLC, scene iii, page 9
Noun
canoodling (plural canoodlings)
- Amorous pettings or caresses.
- Admittedly one is spared the nauseating canoodlings of lovers whose lungs are manifestly greater than their love, which are so common in Wagner evenings[…]1956, George Henry Hubert Lascelles Harewood (Earl of), Opera, volume 7, page 15
- Sure enough, with dark wood walls, thatched overhangs and a formidable totem at the front desk, the Tonga Room has also been the site of more than a few clandestine canoodlings, some of which were immortalized by Herb Caen, the famed San Francisco Chronicle columnist, who trumpeted the room’s happy...2009 April 5, Jesse Mckinley, “Order a Mai Tai and Save Paradise”, in New York Times
Forms of canoodling
| plural | canoodlings |
|---|
Questions about canoodling
- What does canoodling mean?
- Canoodling means amorous pettings or caresses.
- What is canoodling the present participle and gerund of?
- Canoodling is the present participle and gerund of canoodle.
- What part of speech is canoodling?
- Canoodling is a noun.
- What is the plural of canoodling?
- The plural of canoodling is canoodlings.
Words near canoodling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: canoodling (page history and authors); canoodle (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.
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Cite this entry: “canoodling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/canoodling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.