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Fiddling   /fˈɪdlɪŋ/   Listen
Fiddling

adjective
1.
(informal) small and of little importance.  Synonyms: footling, lilliputian, little, niggling, petty, picayune, piddling, piffling, trivial.  "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"



Fiddle

verb
(past & past part. fiddled; pres. part. fiddling)
1.
Avoid (one's assigned duties).  Synonyms: goldbrick, shirk, shrink from.
2.
Commit fraud and steal from one's employer.
3.
Play the violin or fiddle.
4.
Play on a violin.
5.
Manipulate manually or in one's mind or imagination.  Synonyms: diddle, play, toy.  "Don't fiddle with the screws" , "He played with the idea of running for the Senate"
6.
Play around with or alter or falsify, usually secretively or dishonestly.  Synonyms: monkey, tamper.  "The reporter fiddle with the facts"
7.
Try to fix or mend.  Synonym: tinker.  "She always fiddles with her van on the weekend"



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"Fiddling" Quotes from Famous Books



... trouble which the farmers experience in getting native labour, and so forth, and so on; but we must not derive from all this peripatetic fustian the erroneous impression that His Honour has been vacuously fiddling on the eve of a conflagration. The real business which took him to Lydenburg and Middelburg has no doubt been satisfactorily accomplished. Boer sentiment has been tested in secret, and the usual professions of fervid patriotism ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes, and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... read: "Everything is looking much more settled than when I was formerly here, and I do really think that the Government, from the conciliatory measures wisely adopted, will stand their ground against the adherents of Buonaparte. We are to have a great rejoicing to-morrow. All Paris will be dancing, fiddling, and singing. They are a light-hearted people. I wish I could join in their fun. I was hopeful that I should; but the cursed recollection of the injustice that has been done to me is never out of my mind; so ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... tiger-rush Locasto threw himself on his man. There was no preliminary fiddling here; they were out for blood, and the sooner they wallowed in it the better. Right and left he struck with mighty swings that would have felled an ox, but the Jam-wagon was too quick for him. Twice ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzy jumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen. Fiddling with the selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning. Mike and Mitzi shrieked delightedly, like a couple of kids watching a horror show. They knew, by now, that nothing in the screen could get out ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper


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