Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To trifle; toy; play.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To trifle; to toy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To trifle; to toy.
  • verb UK, dialect To fondle; to dandle.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compare fiddle, fiddle-faddle.

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Examples

  • While time and experience make all of us better cyclists, if unchecked they also can conspire to transform us into insufferable pedants--serial retrogrouches and über-curmudgeons who automatically dismiss the strange and unfamiliar as "myth and lore," or "fiddle faddle," or "balderdash," or any other crotchety term of derision to which the cantankerous and ornery are inclined.

    Appealing Package: What's New Is Old Again BikeSnobNYC 2010

  • Or are we just going to fiddle-faddle re-arranging the objects of our concern on that great addictive ship -- America?

    Stanton Peele: What Is Addiction? 2009

  • As you can see, I don't fuss with a doughnut cutter and holes and all that fiddle-faddle.

    Doughnut Day! Gumbo Lily 2009

  • As you can see, I don't fuss with a doughnut cutter and holes and all that fiddle-faddle.

    Archive 2009-03-01 Gumbo Lily 2009

  • I was very pleased with my first attempt, bit of a fiddle-faddle, but tasted great.

    Polish Christmas food | the POLSKI blog 2008

  • 'Fiddle, faddle, what's the good of ripping up old stories about nothing? when you're with genteel people, you must do as I do; never talk about business at all.'

    Camilla 2008

  • All this wasted 2-step fiddle-faddle can come to a screeching halt.

    Time for America to go Metric? Youbecha! 2008

  • But councils wouldn't let movies be shown that weren't BBFC censored... and so the system was imposed without the fiddle faddle of legislation.

    'Independent' EU funded Quango 'blocks' Wiki Guthrum 2008

  • The piece was translated by Lord Fiddle-faddle, Tom Bulbul being the

    Our Street 2006

  • It's just more ridiculous fiddle-faddle perpetuating the conservative Big Lies they've been pimping since forever.

    rolling blackout 2006

Comments

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  • "In the nineteenth century there were hundreds of vessels in the Newfoundland sealing fleet and thousands of men who paid the merchants their thirty shillings and a faddle of firewood for the privilege of sailing each spring to the ice."

    —David Macfarlane, The Danger Tree, 70

    May 6, 2008

  • Also means "to trifle or toy (with)."

    May 6, 2008