Crossword clues for fiddling
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fiddle \Fid"dle\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Fiddled; p. pr. & vb. n. Fiddling.]
-
To play on a fiddle.
Themistocles . . . said he could not fiddle, but he could make a small town a great city.
--Bacon. -
To keep the hands and fingers actively moving as a fiddler does; to move the hands and fingers restlessy or in busy idleness; to trifle.
Talking, and fiddling with their hats and feathers.
--Pepys.
Wiktionary
Of petty or trivial importance; footling n. action of the verb ''to fiddle'' v
(present participle of fiddle English)
WordNet
adj. (informal terms) small and of little importance; "a fiddling sum of money"; "a footling gesture"; "our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war"; "a little (or small) matter"; "Mickey Mouse regulations"; "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" [syn: footling, lilliputian, little, Mickey Mouse, niggling, piddling, piffling, petty, picayune, trivial]
Usage examples of "fiddling".
Scarlet clusters of acne stood out on his cheeks, and his glasses, retro Buddy Holly, were smudged at the corners where he was fiddling with them.
He stood there in the moonlight, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, fiddling with the bugle, shaking it angrily, testing it against his lips.
Vanessa who had been fiddling with the camcorder glanced up and gave a loud gasp of amazement making Zoe look around.
She found the maintenance access and a few seconds fiddling with a coder let her inside.
Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it.
The marvelous music box broke down completely this morning, and no amount of fiddling by Lord Levan would get it working again.
The women around Theophanu muttered to each other under their breath, pacing, fiddling with chess pieces, quite beside themselves to hear the message she had brought.
Bahzell finished fiddling with the last strap and looked up at last, and his deep voice rumbled derisively.
Haseloff decided to work up a ballet in three acts, with which he had been fiddling ever since his childhood.
He stopped fiddling with the spoon and dropped it onto the blotter where it left a round stain.
Although she understood the striker, rather than fiddling with the device, Anna hummed the tune she and Brill had used to light the candles again.
It was the same house in which he had long occupied a modest bachelor flat, but on his marriage he had taken, in addition, the flat above his own, and thus possessed what was, in effect, a seven-roomed maisonette, although, on account of a fiddling L.
The Moties kept fiddling with the insides of their instruments, tuning them, or sometimes handing them to a Brown with a flurry of bird whistles.
It would mean fiddling with the date on her birth certificate, but Peter knew a man in Pune who was good at that sort of thing.
Cherisse leaned into the glow of the makeup mirror, fiddling with a stroppy false eyelash.