how are you diddling
- idiom
- Archaic
:
¿cómo te va?
- After months apart, Sarah called and said, 'how are you diddling these days?'
Examples
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Whenever he sees me, he greets me with a cheerful 'how are you diddling?'
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I just wanted to ask, how are you diddling?
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It's a phrase my grandfather always used: 'how are you diddling?'.
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Hey, how are you diddling today?
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Whenever he sees me, he greets me with a cheerful 'how are you diddling?'.
-
After months apart, Sarah called and said, 'how are you diddling these days?'
-
Hey, how are you diddling today?
Synonyms
38
9.1
A casual greeting asking how someone is or what's new
3
9.9
A casual way to ask someone how they are or what they are doing
2
8.5
To ask someone how they are when you meet them
2
9.9
A short informal way to ask how someone is
A friendly informal greeting asking how someone is
To ask someone in a friendly, casual way how they are
A casual greeting that asks what is going on
A polite, formal greeting used when meeting someone for the first time
How Informal
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase follows the transparent template 'how are you X' so a learner who knows 'diddle' (to spend time idly or behave playfully) can plausibly infer a greeting meaning like 'how are you doing/what are you up to'. However, 'diddle' is colloquial and the greeting sense/pragmatic use is regional and not fully predictable from the verb alone, so some learners may misinterpret it as literal idle behavior rather than a routine informal 'how are you'.
Etymology
How are you diddling may come from the old word diddle, which meant 'to play' or 'to waste time'. People would ask if someone was 'diddling' to mean whether they were busy or all right, so it became a friendly way to ask 'how are you'.