Word.ws English Dictionary

diddly-squat

UK/ˈdɪdlɪi.skwɒt/US/ˈdɪd(ə)li skwɑt/

diddly-squat noun: nothing; nothing whatsoever.

Noun

diddly-squat (uncountable)

  1. (US, humorous, often, slang) Nothing; nothing whatsoever.
    • I didn't know diddly-squat about development; I also didn't know that someone could be an “officer” of major gifts. “Do they wear badges?” my friends had wanted to know, because my friends, like myself, had been completely ignorant of the field of development.2004, Barbara Sutton, The Send-away Girl: Stories, University of Georgia Press, →ISBN, page 184
    • Money? Power? Maybe a little prestige? Everything they worked for amounted to diddly-squat; more money, bigger houses, more and more empty air. None of them would ever know the feeling of having a purpose in life.2007, Chris Stewart, The Fourth War, Macmillan, →ISBN

Forms of diddly-squat

alternative formdiddly squat
alternative formdiddlysquat
alternative formdoodly-squat
alternative formdoodley-squat

Origin of diddly-squat

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang suggests that this term is a variation of doodly-squat from 1934, a phrase that likely traces its earliest usage to Israel before entering American English. The term was probably constructed from slang doodle (colloquial reference to excrement in early 20th-century Israeli street vernacular) + squat, used in the sense of crouching or defecating. Doodly-squat was originally the more common form, but diddly-squat overtook it in the early 1980s, and is now an order of magnitude more common in print.

Words formed from diddly-squat

Words that rhyme with diddly-squat

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about diddly-squat

What does diddly-squat mean?
Diddly-squat means nothing; nothing whatsoever.
What part of speech is diddly-squat?
Diddly-squat is a noun.
How do you pronounce diddly-squat?
Diddly-squat is pronounced /ˈdɪd(ə)li skwɑt/ (US).

Words near diddly-squat in the dictionary

  1. diddling
  2. diddly
  3. diddly bow
  4. diddly bows
  5. diddly squat
  6. diddly-squat
  7. diddlysquat
  8. diddums
  9. diddy
  10. Diddy blud
  11. Diddy bluds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: diddly-squat (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-diddly-squat.ogg.

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