fiddle

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A violin, especially one used to play folk or country music.
• noun Nautical A guardrail used on a table during rough weather to prevent things from slipping off.
• noun Informal Nonsensical, trifling matters.
• noun Chiefly British An instance of cheating or swindling; a fraud.
• intransitive verb To play a fiddle.
• intransitive verb To touch or handle something in a nervous way.
• intransitive verb To make unskilled efforts at repairing or improving.
• intransitive verb To meddle or tamper.
• intransitive verb Chiefly British To commit a fraud, especially to steal from one's employer.
• intransitive verb To play (a tune) on a fiddle.
• intransitive verb Chiefly British To alter or falsify for dishonest gain.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To play upon the fiddle or violin or some similar instrument.
• Hence To scrape, as one stretched string upon another.
• To play (upon), in a figurative sense.
• To move the hands or other objects over one another or about in an idle or ineffective way.
• To be busy with trifles; trifle; do something requiring considerable pains and patience without any adequate result.
• To play on, in a figurative sense.
• To play (a tune) on a fiddle.
• noun A musical stringed instrument of the viol class; a violin. See viol, violin, crowd.
• noun Nautical, a contrivance to prevent things from rolling off the table in bad weather. It is made of small cords passed through wooden bridges and hauled very taut. Same as rack.
• noun In wool-carding, an implement used in Yorkshire, England, for smoothing the points of card-clothing and dislodging dirt from among the teeth.
• noun In an orchestra, to take the part of the first (or second) violinplayer.
• noun Hence— To take a leading (or subordinate) part in any project or undertaking.
• noun In ceramics, a rack in which pieces of ware that have been dipped in liquid glaze are placed to drain.
• noun A piece of wood by which the guy-ropes of a tennis-net are stretched to keep them taut.

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

• intransitive verb To play on a fiddle.
• intransitive verb 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.
• transitive verb To play (a tune) on a fiddle.
• noun (Mus.) A stringed instrument of music played with a bow; a violin; a kit.
• noun (Bot.) A kind of dock (Rumex pulcher) with fiddle-shaped leaves; -- called also fiddle dock.
• noun (Naut.) A rack or frame of bars connected by strings, to keep table furniture in place on the cabin table in bad weather.
• noun (Zoöl.) a Japanese carabid beetle (Damaster blaptoides); -- so called from the form of the body.
• noun (Naut.) a long tackle block having two sheaves of different diameters in the same plane, instead of side by side as in a common double block.
• noun fiddlestick.
• noun (Zoöl.) the angel fish.
• noun See fiddle head in the vocabulary.
• noun a form of the handles of spoons, forks, etc., somewhat like a violin.
• noun [Colloq.] to take a leading or a subordinate part.

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

• noun music Any of various bowed string instruments, often used to refer to a violin when played in any of various traditional styles, as opposed to classical violin.
• noun An adjustment intended to cover up a basic flaw.
• noun fraud
• noun nautical On board a ship or boat, a rail or batten around the edge of a table or stove to prevent objects falling off at sea. (Also fiddle rail)
• verb To play aimlessly.
• verb To adjust in order to cover a basic flaw or fraud etc.
• verb music To play traditional tunes on a violin in a non-classical style.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb commit fraud and steal from one's employer