To coddiwomple is to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague or as-yet-unknown destination. It is an informal English word of recent coinage, and it is the word in the title of my memoir in poetry and prose, Called to Coddiwomple (Ginninderra Press, 2023).
Here is what the published sources say about it.
How do you say coddiwomple?
It breaks into four syllables: cod·di·wom·ple. It is a verb: you coddiwomple, and the travelling itself is coddiwompling.
Is coddiwomple a real word?
It is in use, but it is not old. It is often described online as "Old English slang", and the sources below do not support that.
- Writing in his Spectator Australia language column in 2022, Kel Richards reported that the Australian National Dictionary Centre confirmed the word was yet to appear in any major dictionary, and could trace it back no further than 2001. He noted it was in the Urban Dictionary, but not in the Oxford or Webster's.
- The British Pilgrimage Trust describes it as a modern coinage of recent decades that is not found in any historical dictionary, despite the "old English slang" label it is often given online.
The word and the book
Called to Coddiwomple follows me from memories of family and country South Australia to the beginning of my nomadic life in my campervan, Trevor, and I wrote it from that van. The title comes from the word itself: to travel purposefully toward an as-yet-unknown destination, which is what the book's pages do.
The book moves between memory and the present tense of travel: family, country childhoods, ageing, change and self-discovery. In his note on the Ginninderra Press page for the book, Martin Christmas describes it as a memoir-poetry book that is not a tour guide of country South Australia, but an insight into the writer as she "comes of age" and begins her nomadic travels. His note ends by inviting readers to "go coddiwompling through the pages".
Coddiwompling on the road
Trevor and I, with my greyhound Winter in the back, have covered a good deal of Australia, including Tasmania. It is a life measured in fuel stops and free camps, and the places are only half of it. The rest is the people met briefly and remembered for years.
I share the everyday side of it, the detours and the free camps and the odd corners of the map, under my travel banner Where to Today in SA on Facebook and Instagram. The travelling is still producing new writing, under the working title Van Life Stories.
Coddiwomple, peregrination and pilgrimage
The British Pilgrimage Trust sets the word beside two older ones:
- Peregrination: a wandering or journey through the world, from the Latin peregrinus, the same root that gives English "pilgrim".
- Pilgrimage: a journey with a known, meaningful destination. Coddiwompling keeps the sense of purpose but leaves the destination unknown.