The second week of school has dawned, and I know that many of you are just now experiencing the full weight of the first batch of assignments. That’s why I thought it would be fun to examine a silly word — in this case, piddler. I must thank my mom for inspiring this week’s word.

As piddlers, we all tend to piddle from time to time. But what, exactly, is piddling? Well, “to piddle” means to spend one’s time aimlessly, to squander, waste or generally twaddle away the hours in pursuits such as Facebook or updating one’s iTunes while one should be working on one’s homework — in other words, to work inefficiently while frittering your time away. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines a piddler as “a person who engages ineffectually or superficially in an occupation or pastime; a dilettante.” It can also mean to, ah, well, urinate, but more on that later.

The etymology of this particularly goofy word is rather mysterious. But like any etymologist worth his proverbial salt, I do have a fairly good guess. Piddler, of course, comes from piddle, which might come from the regional Hessian (German) world piddlen, or pitteln (or pütteln), meaning “to pick at something” (like one’s food), according to the OED. Another possible origin relates piddle to pitzel, another regional German word and a noun referring to “a small effort or task.” But these thoughts are purely speculative.

What we do know for sure is that piddle made its first recorded appearance in written English in about 1545, in Roger Ascham’s curiously titled Toxophilus, the Schole of Shootinge, with the line, “Neuer ceasynge piddelynge about your bowe and shaftes whan they be well.” Ascham was a Greek and Latin scholar of the first rank, an influential teacher in the court of the Tudors and an important wordsmith of the English vernacular in the generation before Shakespeare.

He decried the then-harsh methods of classical education and instead argued for an edifying learning process. His Toxophilus was a treatise on the importance of archery in the education of young noblemen, and was written in “plain” English that was better suited to “hit the mark” of understanding and to encourage the cooperation and mutual appreciation of different socioeconomic classes in England, according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature.

The first recorded use of piddler proper was in 1602, in Thomas Dekker’s Blurt, Master Constable, with the line, “This Flaxen hayr'd men are such pu-lers, and such pidlers.” Dekker lived at about the same time as that other fellow we talk about often in this column, the Bard, and was even more prolific, churning out dozens of plays and other works for the London stage. Dekker’s identity is still murky, but we do know that he was a champion of the underdog, including foreigners, prostitutes, lame soldiers and the poor. One of Dekker’s consistent themes was that mercy extended to the underprivileged members of society would be rewarded in heaven.

As for that other, less savory definition of piddle, it first came into use as a synonym for peeing in the late 1700s. A good example is found in 1836 in Benjamin Smart’s Walker Remodelle: A New Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. Smart was a distinguished elocution (speaking) teacher who made a long career out of his love for English. The line in question is Smart’s definition of piddle: “This word is now scarcely used except as a child's word in the sense of to make water” (how very polite).

So be wary of over-piddling as a potential piddler, or at least be careful when you piddle. Please feel free to send your word ideas and until next time, cheerio!

[Reach columnist Will Mari at features @thedaily.washington.edu.]