Adjacent Words

Fiddling definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

FID'DLING, ppr. Playing on a fiddle.
FID'DLING, n. The act of playing on a fiddle.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: (informal) small and of little importance; "a fiddling sum of money"; "a footling gesture"; "our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war"; "a little (or small) matter"; "a dispute over niggling details"; "limited to petty enterprises"; "piffling efforts"; "giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction" [syn: fiddling, footling, lilliputian, little, niggling, piddling, piffling, petty, picayune, trivial]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1652 trifling, petty <a fiddling excuse>

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 a petty, trivial. b contemptible, futile. 2 colloq. = FIDDLY. 3 that fiddles.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Fiddle Fid"dle, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Fiddled; p. pr. & vb. n. Fiddling.] 1. To play on a fiddle. Themistocles . . . said he could not fiddle, but he could make a small town a great city. --Bacon. 2. To keep the hands and fingers actively moving as a fiddler does; to move the hands and fingers restlessy or in busy idleness; to trifle. Talking, and fiddling with their hats and feathers. --Pepys.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. Fiddling is the practice of getting money dishonestly by altering financial documents. (BRIT INFORMAL) Salomon's fiddling is likely to bring big trouble for the firm. 2. Violin playing, especially in folk music, is sometimes referred to as fiddling. 3. You can describe something as fiddling if it is small, unimportant, or difficult to do. ...the daunting amount of fiddling technical detail. ADJ: usu ADJ n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Trifling, frivolous, trivial, idle. See fiddle-faddle, a.