I watched a BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby the other day, and came across a bit of dialogue I couldn't quite decipher:
A character named Squeers: I hope you didn't set out the good cut of meat.
His wife: Do I look like a noddy?
What does noddy mean exactly? Is it archaic slang? I'm guessing it means something close to "fool" here, but I want to be quite sure of the connotation of the word and when one would use it.
Best Answer
In today's British English you can hear noddy applied to a question or a problem.
You can even hear, speaking of someone:
The meaning is "simpleton". It's not that of fool as in "insane".
This is confirmed by the main entry (there are no less than 5 for the common noun) in the OED:
Here are a few quotes (including your own quote).