waffle

Plural: waffles

Noun

pancake batter baked in a waffle iron
A flat pastry pressed with a grid pattern, often eaten hot with butter and/or honey or syrup.
In full potato waffle: a savoury flat potato cake with the same kind of grid pattern.
A concrete slab used in flooring with a gridlike structure of ribs running at right angles to each other on its underside.
A type of fabric woven with a honeycomb texture.
(Often lengthy) speech or writing that is evasive or vague, or pretentious.
The high-pitched sound made by a young dog; also, a muffled bark.

Verb

Verb Forms: waffled, waffling, waffles

To speak or write vaguely and indecisively.
pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness
To smash (something).
To speak or write evasively or vaguely.
Of a bird: to move in a side-to-side motion while descending before landing.
Of an aircraft or motor vehicle: to travel in a slow and unhurried manner.
To be indecisive about something; to dither, to vacillate, to waver.
Often followed by on: to speak or write (something) at length without any clear aim or point; to ramble.
To hold horizontally and rotate (one's hand) back and forth in a gesture of ambivalence or vacillation.
Of a dog: to bark with a high pitch like a puppy, or in muffled manner.

Examples

Instead of playing a clear word, he began to WAFFLE about his theoretical options, wasting time.
The brunch was waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.
The geese waffled as they approached the water.
This interesting point seems to get lost a little within a lot of self-important waffle.

Origin / Etymology

The noun is borrowed from Dutch wafel (“waffle; wafer”), from Middle Dutch wafel, wafele, wavel, from Old Dutch *wāvila, from Proto-Germanic *wēbilǭ, *wēbilō, possibly related to Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”) (whence Dutch weven (“to weave”) and English weave; compare, from the same verbal root, German Wabe (“honeycomb”), given that the grid pattern of the traditional Dutch lent and holiday pastry strikingly resembles a honeycomb), and possibly reinforced by German Waffel (“waffle; wafer”). The English word is a doublet of wafer and gauffre.
The verb (“to smash”) derives from the manner in which batter is pressed into the shape of a waffle between the two halves of a waffle iron.

Synonyms

hesitate, waver, babble, bat the breeze, bavardage, beat around the bush, bibble-babble, blab, blabber, blabbing, blather, blathering, blow hot and cold, carp, chat, chatter, chew the fat, chew the rag, chinwag, chit-chat, chunner, clack, claver, clepe, drivel, gabble, gibber, go on, hot air, jabber, mardle, maunder, natter, palaver, piffle, prate, prattle, rabbit, rabbit on, ramble, scuttlebutt, shoot the breeze, shoot the bull, shoot the shit, small talk, smatter, tattle, twaddle, waffle, whiffle, wibble, witter, yabber, yack, yackety-yak, yap, yatter

Scrabble Score: 15

waffle: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
waffle: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
waffle: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 16

waffle: valid Words With Friends Word