waffle. 1. To equivocate, to write or speak evasively, or to use ambiguous language so as to avoid commitment. To be indecisive or to change one's mind. 2. To write or speak at great length without saying anything that is important or useful.

Substitute New York Times language columnist Jack Rosenthal's dog says “EER-ruff; Little Orphan Annie's dog says arf, and dogs in general say bow-wow.” Marjorie Garber reports that “Chinese dogs say ‘Wung-wung,’ Spanish dogs ‘Jau-jau,’ French dogs ‘Ouah-ouah,’ and Israeli dogs ‘Hav-hav.’” Onomatopoeia is in the ear of listener, or at the least it is language-dependent.  At some point in time, British dogs must have said “Waff-waff.” The Oxford English Dictionary traces the verb “waffle” back to an earlier word, “waff” or “waugh,” meaning to yelp like a small dog or a puppy. This meaning for waffle predates the noun for “a kind of batter-cake, baked in a waffle-iron, and eaten hot with butter and molasses.” The OED provides a nice alliterative quotation about “whaffling whelps that can bark and not bite.”

So, etymologically speaking, to waffle is to bark like a dog. While I understand that the second meaning—to go on and on and on—is alive and well in the U.K., it is primarily the first meaning that one sees employed in the U.S. Not that the definitions are unrelated: I can appreciate that talking at length and saying little might be a good strategy for equivocation.

In the early 1990s President Bill Clinton was famously depicted as a waffle by satirist and cartoonist Gary Trudeau. Trudeau saw Clinton as following the polls and not principle. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was cast similarly by the Republicans in 2004, though called a “flip-flopper” instead. Waffling is a matter of indecision or deliberate ambiguity, while flip-flopping involves actual changes in defined positions. Both may be seen as signs of opportunism or lack of principle.

Figure 2 is a panel from the comic strip Doonesbury in which Bill Clinton is portrayed as a waffle. In true waffle fashion, Clinton is shown debating health care coverage with himself. This image is copyrighted and unlicensed. I believe that the use of this excerpted low-resolution reproduction in the entry “waffle” to illustrate the subject in question where no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.