Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a short, squat person; thus rhy. phr. hoddy doddy, all arse and no body.

1550		Udall Ralph Roister Doister I i: Sometimes I hang on Hankyn Hoddydoddy’s sleeve.
1598		Jonson Every Man In his Humour V i: That make your husband such a hoddy-doddy.
1639–61		Rump Songs II (1662) 55: Every noddy... will... cry hoddy-doddy / Here’s a Parliament all arse and no body.
1656		‘Basilius Musophilus’ Don Zara Del Fogoy 162: Where shall I bath this vexed body, Tormented to a Hoddy-Doddy?
1723		Swift ‘Mary the Cookmaid’s Letter’ in Chalmers Eng. Poets XI (1810) 433: My master is a parsonable man, and not a spindle-shank’d hoddy-doddy.
1764		K. O’Hara Midas II ii: Who sent for you, you hoddy doddy?
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Hoddy doddy, all a—se and no body, a short clumsy person, either male or female.
1794		Caledonian Mercury 29 Nov. 3/3: Have you seen my body? Sacrific’d to modern taste, I’m quite a hoddy-doddy.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue [as cit. 1785].
1841		Examiner 2 May 4/2: Tjhough born to be little’s my fate [...] I’m no lanky long hoddy-doddy [...] Though wanting two feet in my body, In soul, I am thirty feet high.

2. (later use US) a fool, a simpleton.

1593		Nashe Four Letters Confuted in Works II (1883–4) 211: Brother hoddy doddy, your penne is a coult by cockes body [...] thou beest a goose-cappe and hast no judgment.
1600		W. Kemp Nine Days’ Wonder in Arber English Garner VII (1883) 37: It did him good to have ill words of a hoddy doddy! a hebber de hoy!, a chicken! a squib!
1851		Chester Chron. 20 Sept. 6/1: Vexed at such a hoddy-doddy person, who will neither adance or retreat but remains to be shot at, I want to know [etc.].
1868		London Standard 26 Dec. 7/1: We must protest [...] such names as [...] Lord Hoddy Doddy.
1888		Reynolds’s Newspaper 9 Dec. 5/3: You’re such a Hoddy Doddy.
1941		in W.C. Fields By Himself (1974) 394: The girl coos: ‘You big hoddy-doddy – you smoke cigars all day and drink half the night’.