briggle

present singular third person briggles · participle present briggling · participle past briggled · past briggled

1. USdialectalintransitiverareTo potter around; friggle; fiddle.

   Some of the boys called it “a h—l of a time.” Such “briggling about” was almost unpardonable.

   1886, Wm. Kepler, chapter XVII, in History of the three months' and three years' service from April 16th, 1861, to June 22d, 1864, of the Fourth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the war for the Union, Cleveland, Ohio: Leader Printing Company, page 122

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   I let him try his hand at life insurance, after he'd failed at about everything else. Well, in the course of three weeks of briggling, he landed one man for a thousand dollars;

   1906 November 29, James Ball Naylor, “From Jim to Jack: Letters to an Old-Time Schoolmate”, in The Ohio Magazine, volume 1, number 5, page 428, column 1

   “Briggled all day,” is an entry found occasionally in Dad’s diary. Or, “Briggled around.” Usually it was in reference to the work he had done that day, but sometimes an entry indicated that one of us kids briggled. It meant that work was done on various jobs with no major accomplishment.

   2002, Jim Sargent, Too Poor to Move But Always Rich: A Century on Montana Land, Morris Publishing, →ISBN, page 69