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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re:_To_waffle=2c_=e2=80=98to_waver=2c_to_vacillate=2c_to_?=
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Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:13:24 +1200
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On 25/04/2024 6:43 p.m., Aidan Kehoe wrote:
> 
> Speaking (in sci.lang) of Andy Grove, he uses waffle in the above sense in his
> good, well-edited ‘High Output Management.’ In my youth I would only have used
> or understood the word in the meaning ‘to ramble on, to say nothing of much
> consequence,’ and OED2 documents that the fail-to-make-a-decision sense is
> colloquial or non-standard.
> 
> I presume I have misunderstood various Americans over the years in not picking
> up on the ‘dither’ meaning. How universal is that meaning over there?

A curious case. The two senses seem to me worth distinguishing, but 
pretty close to each other, so that some slippage or ambiguity would not 
be surprising.

A few more data points:

OED has the verb derived as a frequentative from "waff", an 
onomatopoetic dog vocalization (they say "yelp", but that doesn't seem 
quite right).

Clear attestation of both senses begins ca.1900.

The "dither" sense is said to be "Originally Scottish and northern 
dialect. Now colloquial or nonstandard."

The "blather" sense is not marked as dialectally restricted.

 From my point of observation: Deverson (NZOxDic) gives both senses for 
NZ. I think I hear "blather" more frequently.

My Macquarie (Aus, 1981) has:
	(v) 1. to speak or write vaguely, pointlessly, and at considerable length;
	2. to talk or write nonsense
	(n) 3. verbosity in the service of superficial thought;
	4. nonsense; twaddle
....all of which look like variants of "blather".

AHD (American, ca.1970) has neither -- no verb "waffle".

I can't make M-W work on this machine; so awaiting information on its 
current status in the USA, I would say: If Andy Grove 
(Hungarian-American) didn't pick it (the "dither" sense) up there, I'm 
guessing he is a man of enough experience and reading that he could have 
heard/read it from UK sources. (It may be "colloquial", but it does 
appear in print.)