Cutting Didos.

A friend who found the word dido in a crossword puzzle fell into a rabbit hole, as she put it, and came out with this Stack Exchange thread that starts with a question about the odd phrase “conniption dido” (apparently used only by the questioner’s great-grandmother) but quickly turns into an examination of the second word, partly focused on the unlikely but apparently irresistible “connection between the term dido and Dido of the Aeneid.” There are a great many piquant responses, of which I’ll reproduce two: **Cutting didos is an antique expression. Comedian Fred Allen in his 1950 book “Much Ado About Me” mentions sitting in the parlor with his grandmother in 1915 and “cutting didos” (clowning around to kill time apparently–this was before smart phones and you had to do SOMETHING with your time. You could also “walk in the woods like Beethoven”!! What a fun, archaic phrase!! ** answered Nov 8, 2015 at 3:28 Tony Rizzi My grandmother’s memoirs quote her father (1930s, Oklahoma) talking…