“Tomnoddy” means a foolish or stupid person and Tolkien says right there in the text that it’s an insult.  We’re tagging it as “low”.  Trivia, Tom-Noddy is also a local name for a the puffin (Fratercula arctica).  Notice something that Tolkien does now and then?  He has made a compound word out of a hyphenated one (click here for our discussion of making hyphenated words out of two singles).  There are more examples which we will be interested in later, and these feed my theory of Tolkien reminding us that he is merely translating from Bilbo’s Westron writings.

• 08.097 Old Tomnoddy,
• 08.097 Old Tomnoddy can’t spy me!
• 08.098 and Tomnoddy of course is insulting to anybody.

“Tom-noddy, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 20 May 2015.