Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Flapdoodle

Flapdoodle, flamdoodle, doodleflap... They all come down to the same thing (more or less)
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Nonsense.

Or as my protagonist Inez Stannert is wont to say: stuff and nonsense.

My copy of Americanisms, Old and New (1889) gives us the following circular definitions:

Flamdoodle—Nonsense; vain-boasting. Probably only a variation of flap-doodle.
Flap-doodle—To talk flap-doodle is to talk boastingly; to utter nonsense. Varied by flamdoodle.

World Wide Words shrugs over the origin of the word, noting that most dictionaries fall back on "origin unknown" or "an arbitrary formation," adding:

Whatever its source, it’s usually and reasonably taken to be an American word. Which makes it slightly odd that the first known example is from a book by the English writer Captain Frederick Marryat, best known for Mr Midshipman Easy and The Children of the New Forest. His Peter Simple was serialised in the Metropolitan Magazine in 1832–33: “‘The gentleman has eaten no small quantity of flapdoodle in his lifetime.’ ‘What’s that, O’Brien?’ replied I. ‘Why, Peter,’ rejoined he, ‘it’s the stuff they feed fools on.’

The Online Etymological Dictionary suggests that flap may refer to "a stroke, blow" and doodle to "fool, simpleton."

I shall leave you with the following most excellent example of flap-doodle in a sentence, as used in the Daily Inter-Ocean, March 2, 1888:

Possibly rich men will turn from sharp dealing, from debauchery, from flap-doodle fashion to a common-sense recognition of a situation, which shows clearly that wealth is no longer what it used to be—autocratic, absolute, the ruler of all else.

Check that date. 1888? 

Hmmmmm.

Sounds like so much flapdoodle to me...