[See the sb.] intr. To be busy about petty trifles; to fuss, ‘mess about.’
1633. Ford, The Broken Heart, I. iii.
| Answer to that,—your Art? what Art to catch | |
| And hold fast in a net the Sunnes small Atomes? | |
| No, no; they’ll out, they’ll out; ye may as easily | |
| Out-run a Cloud, driuen by a Northerne blast, | |
| As fiddle faddle so. Peace, or speake sense. |
1776. Mrs. Delany, Lett., Ser. II. II. 202. Had you been bred up only to fiddle faddle, you would have fiddle faddled all your life.
1870. Miss Broughton, Red as Rose, I. xi. 226. Tired! what the devil has she been doing to tire herself?—fiddle-faddled about the garden, picking off half a dozen dead roses.
Hence Fiddle-faddling vbl. sb. and ppl. a. Also Fiddle-faddler.
1834. Medwin, Angler in Wales, I. Preface, viii.–ix. But lest I should chance to be considered here one of the tribe of that fiddle-faddling, dull old prosing pedant, Fadladeen, I intend to reserve my scholia, or running comment, for the text.
1846. Worcester (citing Quarterly Review), Fiddle faddler, a foolish trifler.
1850. Clough, Poems and Pr. Rem. (1869), I. 168. Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it without fiddle-faddling; for there is no experience, nor pleasure, nor pain, nor instruction, nor anything else in the grave whither thou goest.
1861. Miss Braddon, Lady Lisle (1885), 36. I don’t want him to be a fiddle-faddling girl.
1882. Society, 14 Oct., 11/2. The mistaken notion … that detail is a substitute for spirit and fiddle-faddling for acting.
