fiddle-faddle

alternative fiddlefaddle

1. uncountablenonsense

   I can understand why people read horoscopes, but for me it's a bunch of fiddle-faddle.

   1 more example

   These foolish Mistresses do so hang about ye, so whimper, and so hug, I know it Gentlemen, and so intice ye, now ye are i’th’ bud; and that sweet tilting war, with eyes and kisses, th’ alarms of soft vows, and sighs, and fiddle faddles, spoils all our trade: you must forget these knick knacks, a woman at some time of year, I grant ye she is necessarie; but make no business of her.

   1679 Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher: Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. The Humourous Lieutenant. p. 190

   Synonyms: nonsense

present singular third person fiddle-faddles · participle present fiddle-faddling · participle past fiddle-faddled · past fiddle-faddled · alternative fiddlefaddle

1. intransitiveTo trifle; to dally.

   The cur foretells the knell of parting day; The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea; The wise man homeward plods; I only stay To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

   1911 Ambrose Bierce, The devil's dictionary. Neale Publishing, 1909-1912 The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce: Volume VII p. 88. ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example begins somewhat like this

comparative more fiddle-faddle · superlative most fiddle-faddle · alternative fiddlefaddle

1. intransitiveTrifling; dallying; inclined to fuss about trifles.

   2 more examples

   I think, quoth Corporal Trim, with humble submission to your Honour’s better judgment,——that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and hornworks, make but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here upon paper, compared to what your Honour and I could make of it were we in the country by ourselves, and had but a rood, or a rood and a half of ground to do what we pleased with: As summer is coming on, continued Trim, your Honour might sit out of doors, and give me the nography—(Call it ichnography, quoth my uncle,)——of the town or citadel, your Honour was pleased to sit down before,—and I will be shot by your Honour upon the glacis of it, if I did not fortify it to your Honour’s mind.

   1659, Laurence Sterne, chapter XXX, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

   The witnesses made oath that they had heard some of the liverymen frequently railing at their mistress. They said she was a troublesome fiddle-faddle old woman, and so ceremonious that there was no bearing of her. They were so plagued with bowing and cringing as they went in and out of the room that their backs ached.

   1712 John Arbuthnot. The History of John Bull: Oxford University Press 1976 →ISBN p.68