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footle
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
footle

"to trifle," 1892, from dialectal footer "to trifle," footy "mean, paltry" (1752), perhaps from French se foutre "to care nothing," from Old French futer "to copulate with," from Latin futuere "have sex," originally "to strike, thrust" (see confute). But OED derives the English dialect words from foughty (c.1600), from Dutch vochtig or Danish fugtig "damp, musty;" related to fog (n.).

Wiktionary
footle

n. nonsense; foolishness. vb. 1 To waste time; to trifle. 2 To talk nonsense.

WordNet
footle
  1. v. be about; "The high school students like to loiter in the Central Square"; "Who is this man that is hanging around the department?" [syn: loiter, lounge, lollygag, loaf, lallygag, hang around, mess about, tarry, linger, lurk, mill about, mill around]

  2. act foolishly, as by talking nonsense

Usage examples of "footle".

Oh, they could cook and dig and wash and footle and buttle and did it very well but could never quite get the hang of the serving mentality.

He's got to have the shackles still on him when he reaches the shore so Pip can fetch a file to release him, so you're going to have to footle with the back-story.

The only one Underhill had ever known had been a fellow grunt in Lieutenant Beevers's band of merry men, his real name being Philip Footler, but known everywhere as Phoorow, a sweet-faced young redneck who had participated in Lieutenant Beevers's second-greatest fuckup, a military exercise that took place in Dragon Valley, or down in Dragon Valley, as they used to say, them what was there.

To ensure a full moon for the landing, or for some such footling reason, the weight of two carriers was nonchalantly forgone.

The knowledge I have gained is so footling that I may not even trouble to do so.

Doctor, his long legs crossed and a footling smile of anticipation on his face.

Are you sure that would be worse than living with a man she did love, if he was a footling person?

For anything simpler than distributing a few footling books to a bunch of grimy-faced kids I can't imagine.

Miss Didion would dismiss the comparison as footling when compared to the inescapability of her new-found emotional rawness.

He'd have the Playboy Channel for one thing, and all the footling vapidity of unrelieved soft core.

From his hours of sitting at the foot of the table, Fafhrd had learned that most of the spells were designed to inflict a noisome disease upon Gwaay: the Black Plague, the Red Plague, the Boneless Death, the Hairless Decline, the Slow Rot, the Fast Rot, the Green Rot, the Bloody Cough, the Belly Melts, the Ague, the Runs, and even the footling Nose Drip.

They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling bats and suddenly heard a girl's voice.