nurdle

n. a grain, pellet, granule, or other small piece of a material, especially as part of a large quantity (such as foam kernels used as packing material); (in pronunciation-based spellings) a nodule; a quantity of a gel or semi-solid; a thing of unknown name (doodad, thingamajig, etc.). Also nerdle. Subjects: English, Colloquial

Editorial Note: The use of nurdle to describe the amount of toothpaste one should put on a toothbrush was probably popularized as part of an organized campaign by the American Dental Association. A nurdle is also a play in the game of tiddlywinks and a type of batting in cricket. There are also, apparently, at least two ridiculous British games called nurdling, both which can only be explained after beers.

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Citations: 1994 [Julian Barkway] Usenet: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy (Jan. 21) “Re: Amiga vs. Mac”: “No it’s not. Mine’s got a bigger nurdle.” “Yeah, but I bet it hasn’t got one of them new widgets” 1995 Jay King Usenet: rec.hunting (July 11) “Re: [Slings] Info requested”: Without a doubt—God’s gift to huntin’ fools everywhere is the sling made by Butler Creek. It’s made so it has a slight bungee action and it has some little nurdles to help keep it on your shoulder. It’s also cheap. 1995 Kathleen Lenkeit Usenet: rec.arts.tv.soaps.abc (Aug. 14) “Re: GH: Time for MPT”: Plenty of people have “fake words that the family uses”—for example…“nerdles” (rhymes with hurdles) for dry cat food thingys. 1996 [Charles McCartney] Usenet: alt.surfing (July 1) “HB Nurdles”: Can anyone give me a factual account of how those little tiny plastic disks got into the sand in HB. I was born there in 1964 and for as long as I can remember they have been in the sand there, but not down in Laguna or San Clemente. Some buffoon told me that they are called “Nurdles,” dumb name but anyway this mystery has been picking my brain for some time. 1996 Gary A. Clark St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) (Aug. 19) “Monday Memo” p. 5: So how much toothpaste should you use, given all those millions spent on the product? A “nerdle” says the ADA. That’s a squeeze that covers the length of the bristles on a toothbrush, ADA researches say. 1996 [Bob Buxbaum] Usenet: rec.models.scale (Dec. 20) “Re: Plastic Model Putty—is there a good one?”: I put down a nurdle (a precise measurement, somewhere between “a little” and “a skoshe”) of the green stuff, make a little crater in it and put in some Testors liquid cement. 1997 Leah Garchik San Francisco Chronicle (Calif.) (Sept. 22) “Law and Order in Berkeley” p. E12: Beachcombers’ Alert! newsletter reports that at Moclips, Washington on July 12, 1997, numerous “whitish plastic pellets (nurdles)” were found. Nurdles? Does anyone whence this word came? 1997 Leah Garchik San Francisco Chronicle (California) (Sept. 29) “Personals” p. E8: On the origin of the word “nurdles,” used herein recently to describe styrofoam packing pellets…Marge of Novato says that her daughter calls them “ghost poop”; John Minton says the word is a combination of “noodles” and “turd.” 1997 Leah Garchik San Francisco Chronicle (California) (Oct. 9) “Compliments to One and All” p. E10: Casting aspersions on all the “nurdle” explanations that have gone before, E.R. McSwine explains, with an air of authority, that the word came from “nodule,” which was part of the original phrase, “Styrofoam packing nodules.” 1998 Usenet: rec.backcountry (Aug. 2) “Re: Pack Laundering”: “What is the best method for laundering an internal frame pack (NF Badlands)?” “Mild soap in a bathtub full of warmish water. Fingernail brush on the stubborn nurdles. Air dry for a couple of days.” 1998 [Tio Nick Dennis] Usenet: alt.smokers.cigars (Feb. 17) “Re: Jimenez Cigars”: Decent smokes when you can get them on sale, which you can if you see the Famous Flyer underneath your “nerdles” in your last shipment from them. 1999 [Bestine] Usenet: alt.fairs.renaissance (Dec. 8) “Re: OT: New Chocolate Finds (Sinful!)”: Be sure to crunch up the tablet first, dump the knurdles into the pot o’milk. 2001 [Foon] Usenet: alt.surfing (Apr. 9) “Dog(Doody)Day Afternoon”: Within five feet of me the dog takes a huge dump, the kind that comes out like soft ice cream and lands in a piled up nurdle on the ground. The woman proceeds to start covering it with sand. 2001 [Ned Ludd] Usenet: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy (June 7) “Re: the narssist in me…sorry can’t spell it…damb!!”: “Upon reflection, belly button lint can be pretty darn sexy. (depending, of course, on the belly button).”…“Not if it’s flecked with dead mites and sweat nurdles.”…A “nurdle”…is a tiny, compacted, crud nodule. Sweat, body oil, dead flakes of skin, various fauna that inhabit the surface of humans…all of this rolled up in tiny balls of STUFF is what I was referring to as “sweat nurdles.” 2002 [Liz Hampton] Usenet: rec.crafts.textiles.needlework (Jan. 25) “Re: OT. Elephants!”: When I worked in the vet. hospital (animals—not soldierslol) we used “nerdles” in the litter boxes of cats from whom we needed a urine sample. It gave the cats something to dig around in and we could easily collect the sample when they were done. 2002 [BondoBill1] Usenet: alt.autos.studebaker (Sept. 27) “Re: Electrical Question”: Disconnect the battery, unscrew the nurdle that holds the switch, push switch out the rear, and let it hang. 2006 Kenneth R. Weiss KTLA-TV (Los Angeles) (Aug. 2) “Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas”: Instead of plankton, it was choked with a colorful array of tiny plastic fragments.…The jars were filled with plastic pellets the size and shape of pills. They come in all colors and are the raw material for a vast array of plastic products, from trash bags to medical devices.…From his river sampling, Moore estimated that 236 million pellets washed down the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers in three days’ time. Also known as “nurdles” or mermaid tears, they are the most widely seen plastic debris around the world. They have washed ashore as far away as Antarctica. 2007 Susan Casey BestLife (Emmaus, Pennsylvania) (Feb. 2) “Plastic Ocean”: Ask a group of people to name an overwhelming global problem, and you’ll hear about climate change, the Middle East, or AIDS. No one, it is guaranteed, will cite the sloppy transport of nurdles as a concern. And yet nurdles, lentil-size pellets of plastic in its rawest form, are especially effective couriers of waste chemicals called persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, which include known carcinogens such as DDT and PCBs.

Posted 22 Aug 06 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

colloquial pronunciation: nuddle
(my dad’s been using that one for years, mostly in relation to describing dingleberries, dog pooh, and other small gross pieces of things)

by sairuh 24 Aug 06, 0534 GMT

In fact nurdling is related to the act of batting (not bowling) in cricket. It is the act of nudging the ball to the close in-field rather than playing a full-blown shot at the ball (similar to a bunt rather than a full swing in baseball). While it perfectly possible to score runs by nurdling they tend to come (very) slowly.

by Steve Gardner 29 Aug 06, 0853 GMT

Right you are, Steve. I’ve revised the entry accordingly.

by Grant Barrett 29 Aug 06, 0941 GMT

Nurdle has a cute, endearing sound and is a welcome addition to my vocabulary. I guess the consonant + le is a short form for diminutives such as elle or ille. A diminutive diminutive in the tradition of chuckle, chortle, fiddle, faddle, boodle, it’s homey, non-threatening. Yet I feel uneasy about milliards of nurdles washing out to sea. Thanks for the fun!

by Irene Grumman 31 Aug 06, 0627 GMT

Growing up, “nurdles” were generally regarded by me, my sibs, and buddies as any small, hard or semi-hard thingys produced by one’s body and extricated from one’s orifices, usually a nose hole, navel, or butt crack.

by david peck 07 Feb 08, 0349 GMT

Mark Baker

I don’t think you can have nurdle as a noun in cricket. It is a verb to describe a method of batting. Boycott was famous for ‘nudging and nurdling’ his way to a big score.

by Mark Baker 14 Feb 08, 0448 GMT