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There's a specific word which is used for drawings (like smilies, cars, cartoons, etc) which we made to pass the time, say while talking with someone or in a lecture. I need to know the exact word for it.

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95

It's called a doodle.

A rough drawing made absent-mindedly:
the text was interspersed with doodles

[ODO]

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    What about Google Doodles? Just kidding
    – Hanky Panky
    Oct 7, 2015 at 9:35
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    Interesting side note: "doodle" first entered English through the 1936 movie "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town". The exact quote in context can be found on IMDB
    – njuffa
    Oct 7, 2015 at 14:39
  • @njuffa You should send that to OED. Their earliest citation is 1937: R. M. Arundel Everybody's Pixillated p. ix, A ‘doodle’ is a scribbling or sketch made while the conscious mind is concerned with matters wholely unrelated to the scribbling.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Oct 7, 2015 at 14:59
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    The OED editors seem to be aware of the movie, but presumably they need printed references. The OED2 starts its list of citations for the intransitive verb "doodle" as follows: 1937 Lit. Digest 26 June 19/3 'But everybody doodles.' So Gary Cooper, as Longfellow Deeds, in 'Mr. Deeds Goes to Town', defended himself. He wasn't crazy because he drew squares and circles on scraps of paper -- he was just 'doodling'.
    – njuffa
    Oct 7, 2015 at 15:42
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It's the activity known as doodling.

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    ...and the picture itself 'a doodle'
    – Mitch
    Oct 6, 2015 at 14:59
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Another possibility is scribble. The main difference is that doodles are more likely representational while scribbles are generally abstract, though this is not necessarily true in either case.

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    The main difference is "doodle" is cooler sounding.
    – Pacerier
    Oct 8, 2015 at 7:21

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