online medical dictionary | definition of noddy

/nod'ee/ [UK: from the children's books] 1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs are often written by people learning a new language or system. The archetypal noddy program is hello, world. Noddy code may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. "This editor's a bit noddy."

2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use, the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a hack sufficiently trivial that it can be written and debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation. "I'll just throw together a noddy awk script to dump all the first fields." In North America this might be called a mickey mouse program. See toy program.

3. A simple (hence the name) language to handle text and interaction on the Memotech home computer. Has died with the machine.

(01 Jul 2002)

Origin: Prob. Fr. Nod to incline the head, either as in assent, or from drowsiness.

1. A simpleton; a fool.

2. <ornithology> Any tern of the genus Anous, as A. Stolidus. The arctic fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis). Sometimes also applied to other sea birds.

3. An old game at cards.

4. A small two-wheeled one-horse vehicle.

5. An inverted pendulum consisting of a short vertical flat spring which supports a rod having a bob at the top; used for detecting and measuring slight horizontal vibrations of a body to which it is attached.

(01 Mar 1998)