fuddy-duddy

He’s a fuddy-duddy, and he only makes it worse his habit of making bad jokes and then reacting petulantly when people don’t laugh at them.

From Salon ● Jun. 15, 2026

Richard Martin says: "It was the 60s, the government wanted to be modern and thrusting, it wanted to get rid of old fuddy-duddy stuff."

From BBC ● Jan. 29, 2023

Few Britons now recoil at the prospect of King Charles III, even if he sometimes seems more a fuddy-duddy uncle than a national patriarch.

From New York Times ● Sep. 8, 2022

She designed the spirit to pique curiosity of younger drinkers who think of genever as too fuddy-duddy, she told me.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 18, 2021

And now he was like the others in the party—an amiable fuddy-duddy.

From Gargoyles by Hecht, Ben

We tend to think of people from long ago as credulous, unsophisticated fuddy-duddies.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 13, 2021

If those sessions were going on with a bunch of fuddy-duddies they wouldn’t be getting such good results.”

From The Guardian ● Jan. 10, 2016

For self-consciously “edgy” believers, there’s Bad Christian, in which a pastor and two musicians razz each other and blast the fuddy-duddies who don’t get it.

From Slate ● Dec. 14, 2014

Even more startling, some of the fuddy-duddies in traditional media turn out to have a bigger millennial audience than Vice — including, uh, The New York Times, Mr. McDermott said..

From New York Times ● Oct. 10, 2014

You used an expression, dear,—old fuddy-duddies, was it?

From Three Margarets by Barry, Etheldred B. (Etheldred Breeze)