▪ I. fiddling, vbl. n.
(ˈfɪdlɪŋ)
[f. fiddle v. + -ing1.]
The action of the vb. fiddle in various senses.
1. Playing the fiddle.
| c 1460 Emare 390 Bothe harpe and fydyllyng. a 1680 Butler Rem. (1759) I. 7 Th' Arcadians..Whom nothing in the World could bring To civil Life, but fiddling. 1702 Addison Dial. Medals iii. Wks. 1721 I. 530 We see Nero's fidling and Commodus's skill in fencing on several of their Medals. 1879 Besant & Rice Trafalg. Bay ii. (1891) 22 There could be no fiddling that evening. |
2. Fussy trifling; petty adjustment or alteration.
| 1622 Massinger Virg. Mart. iv. i, Hell on your fiddling! 1705 W. King Art of Love xii. 68 Some times your hair you upwards furl..All must through twenty fiddlings pass. 1762 Songs Costume (Percy Soc.) 240 'Tis so metamorphos'd by your fiddling and fangling, That I scarce know my own. 1878 in N. Amer. Rev. CXXVI. 249, I am sick of this fiddling about. |
3. Cheating, swindling.
| 1884 J. Greenwood Little Ragamuffins xxxii. 300 So sure as a boy of mine takes to fiddling, I'd manoeuvre him into quod before he sleeps that night. 1959 New Statesman 11 July 39/1 The Ministry people would not agree because they thought it would lead to [taxi] drivers taking strangers all round the place and doing all sorts of fiddling. |
▪ II. fiddling, ppl. a.
(ˈfɪdlɪŋ)
[f. as prec. + -ing2.]
1. That plays the fiddle.
| 1580 Sidney Arcadia ii. (1590) 217, I curse the fidling finders out of music. 1780 Cowper Progr. Err. 111 A cassocked huntsman and a fiddling priest. a 1839 Praed Poems (1864) I. 290 He lighted by chance on a fiddling fellow. |
2. a. Of persons: Busy about trifles; addicted to futile and petty activity. b. Of things: Petty, trifling, unimportant; contemptible, futile.
| a. 1660 S. Fisher Rusticks Alarm Wks. (1679) 374 The Fruit of their fidling Minds. 1673 Wycherley Gentleman Dancing-Master ii. ii, You grow so fiddling and so trouble⁓some there is no enduring you. 1748 Richardson Clarissa (1811) II. i. 5 A sort of fiddling, busy, yet..unbusy man. |
| b. 1652 Sir E. Nicholas in N. Papers (Camden) 301 Putting himself into every fidling business. a 1672 Wood Life (1848) 70 For feare of making their meetings to be vaine and fidling. 1705 W. King Art of Love 62 The most fidling work of knitting. a 1745 Swift Direc. to Servants ii, Wks. (1778) II. 358 Good cooks cannot abide what they..call fiddling work, where abundance of time is spent, and little done. 1886 J. R. Rees Pleas. of a Bk. Worm v. 169 The quantity of fiddling, complaining criticism with which many of our..critical journals abound. |