fiddle with

present singular third person fiddles with · participle present fiddling with · participle past fiddled with · past fiddled with

1. transitiveTo manipulate or toy with (an object), especially in a nervous, restless or aimless manner.

   Stop fiddling with your food!

   Synonyms: tweak, adjust, tinker

2. transitiveTo tinker with: to make small adjustments or improvements to (something), especially in an experimental or unskilled manner.

   The deadline for my report is two o'clock, but I'm still fiddling with it.

   3 more examples

   If you fiddle with the controls, you might be able to get a better TV picture.

   Fiddle with vertical VOLT/DIV knob until signal comes into view.

   2000, Paul Scherz, Practical electronics for inventors, page 452

   As technology got better, he'd go back and fiddle with them, convinced he could clean them up enough for release.

   2007, Sheryl J. Anderson, Killer Riff, page 49

3. figurativelytransitiveTo manipulate in order to gain something for oneself.

   Don't Fiddle With Sellers Who Have No Equity

   2004, Jay P. DeCima, Start Small, Profit Big in Real Estate, page 65

   Synonyms: mess with

4. colloquialeuphemisticreflexivetransitiveusuallyTo masturbate.

   1 more example

   I was in the Woodley Park–Zoo in D.C. and mom and sister were waiting to see the pandas, so me and my pops broke away to check out the monkey house. Well, there was a beautiful teacher, I mean we're talking a ten, she was blond, had a low-cut dress on, just gorgeous. And she has about eight or nine students and she's pointing out all the different monkeys. And me and my dad noticed this huge orangutan kind of fiddling with himself. And on close [censored] And we kept checking it out and he was looking directly at the teacher. Well, a couple minutes passed by [censored] he proceeds to [censored] that's when the teacher noticed and, you know, took the kids away very hurriedly. But I looked at my dad and said, you know, they're so much like us.

   2006 May 9, Penn Jillette, Michael Goudeau, quoting Chris, 22:22 from the start, in Penn Radio