Some words are used in speech before they get written down, and early on in being written down they are spelled in many ways before they settle on a single spellings. The music we call jazz was also spelled jaz, jas, and jass early on.

The Dil Pickle Club of Chicago (where Sirfessor Malfew Seklew often lectured), home of Dil Pickle Press (publisher of the 1927 edition of Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard), advertised their lectures and publications with posters printed by linocut blocks. They also printed linocut blocks with more cryptic messages on them, such as “GLANDS – ‘NUFF SAID!” and “DU-DIL-DUK BRINGS GOOD LUCK.” Seen above are block prints by Trevor Blake reproducing an original Dil Pickle Club design.  Jack Jones, owner of the Dil Pickle Club / Press, manufactured wooden toy Du-Dil-Duks.

The word for idle sketching, the word for drawing without much thought, that word appears in printed English in the 1930s,  just as the avant culture of the Dil Pickle Club was at its height.  Before the 1930s the word was probably in use but not written down yet.

du-dil-duk… doodle duck…