doodlebugger
doodlebugger noun: a dowser searching for subterranean natural resources such as water or oil.
Noun
doodlebugger (plural doodlebuggers)
- A dowser searching for subterranean natural resources such as water or oil.
- This was a "doodlebugger," a man who searches for oil with divining rods of wondrous shapes and descriptions. And not just any doodlebugger, but one of the hottest noses in the amateur oil-sniffing game – Walter J. Nelson.1963, December 7, William Trombley, “The dowser who finds oil wells”, The Saturday Evening Post, issue 43, page 88
- A geophysicist working in the field to explore oil or other natural resources.
Forms of doodlebugger
| plural | doodlebuggers |
|---|
Origin of doodlebugger
From doodlebug (“divining rod”) + -er.
Questions about doodlebugger
- What does doodlebugger mean?
- Doodlebugger means a dowser searching for subterranean natural resources such as water or oil.
- What part of speech is doodlebugger?
- Doodlebugger is a noun.
- What is the plural of doodlebugger?
- The plural of doodlebugger is doodlebuggers.
Words near doodlebugger in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: doodlebugger (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-doodlebugger.wav.
Cite this entry: “doodlebugger.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doodlebugger. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.