sardoodledom

English

Alternative forms

• Sardoodledom

Etymology

Named after French dramatist Victorien Sardou + doodle +‎ -dom, coined by Irish playwright, critic, and polemicist George Bernard Shaw who first used it on the 1 June, 1895 in the Saturday Review when criticising Sardou's well-made plays.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɑː(ɹ)ˈduːdəldəm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

sardoodledom (uncountable)

1. (uncommon) Well-made works of drama that have trivial, insignificant, or melodramatic plots.
   • [1907 April, H. W. Boynton, “Mr. Shaw as Critic”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     Naturally this critic loses no chance to express his contempt for what he calls “Sardoodledom:” the cult of the “wellmade” play. He gives M. Sardou no bail, and barely allows Mr. Pinero to go at large on good behavior.]

   • 2010 [1946], Eric Bentley, The Playwright as a Thinker: A Study of Drama in Modern Times, 4th edition, University of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 34:

     What is new is that we have in movies an art form so exclusively given over to Sardoodledom that a Yale professor thinks that Sardoodledom is ingrained in the celluloid.

Further reading

• Michael Quinion (1996–2024) “Sardoodledom”, in World Wide Words.
• OED 2nd edition 1989