"Padiddle drivers of America"; and "beater" (= jalopy)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Sat, Mar 15, 2003 at 09:50:23PM -0600, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>    An editorial in today's _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ (March 15, 2003,
> p.30, cols. 2-3) contains the word "padiddle," which can only be
> slang but doesn't appear in the standard slang dictionaries of
> Wentworth-Flexner or Jonathon Green. _HDAS_ of course is stalled at
> the letter O and so can't be consulted. By context, "padiddle drivers
> of America" seems to mean "jalopy drivers of America."

We've discussed _padiddle_ on ADS-L before; in any case, it's in
DARE, with a first cite from 1959.

I expect you'll find it in HDAS, eventually.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED