I have never heard this word used in conversation, but I am familiar with a similar word (if it is a word).
As a percussionist, I had many an opportunity to perform a "flam-ma-diddle", which was a sequence of strikes with mallets or drumsticks: Both sticks on the drum head at once, followed by three single strikes in alternating fashion.
(I am certain that someone more musically inclined can do a better job of explaining this in text!)
I think of my version frequently, but the word in today's note is a first for me.
And flamadiddle is in turn from paradiddle, which is four evenly spaced hits, LRLL or RLRR (not perfectly alternating). Pa-ra-di-ddle pa-ra-di-ddle and so forth, faster and faster, and you have a drum roll; gradually speeding that up and then slowing it down to be able to hear the individual notes, while keeping the spacing even, is something one might do in a drum audition. It's a challenge to make the left-hand and right-hand hits sound exactly the same, which is perhaps why it's "paradiddle" and not "papadiddle".
A "flam" is, as you say, hitting both sticks on the head at once, one very slightly after the other. So if you start the paradiddle with a flam instead of a single hit, it's a flamadiddle, and a doozy to play well fast.
My 1962 snare rudiments book in turn excerpts a 1934 work that uses the words "paradiddle", "flam", and "ratamacue"; but it shows the flamadiddle as a "flam paradiddle" so I guess that usage came later.
All these words are purely onomatopoeia, I think.
This week's words are delicious American treats to my French ears. It's like eating Jell'O! About flummadiddle: I remember from watching old movies that people (wasn't it Scarlett o'Hara?) sometimes said "diddle-ee-do", or something like that, to interrupt another speaker and reject the speech as nonsense. Could that account for the second part of the word?
As for today's word hornswoggle, horns are usually associated to cuckolds in several countries of good old Europe.
Onomatopoeia, maybe, but they are fun.
As to the drummers among you: what about the Little Drummer Boy
Christmas carol? Is it flummadiddleoic?
Onomatopoeia, maybe, but they are fun.
As to the drummers among you: what about the Little Drummer Boy
Christmas carol? Is it flummadiddleoic?
It's an abomination, at least for basses.
But I bet the drummers love it, from all ages, preschool
to those waiting in doctor's offices as they wait for their
appointments, as it comes over the piped in music in the
waiting rooms.