diddle: [19] The current meaning of diddle, ‘to cheat or swindle’, was probably inspired by Jeremy Diddler, a character who was constantly borrowing money and neglecting to repay it in James Kenney’s play Raising the Wind (1803) (the expression raise the wind means ‘to procure the necessary money’). Diddler immediately caught on as a colloquialism for a ‘swindler’, and by at the latest 1806 the verb diddle was being used in the corresponding sense. It may be that Kenney based the name Diddler on another colloquial verb diddle current at that time, meaning ‘to move shakily’ or ‘to quiver’.
