[f. as prec. + -ING2.]
1. That plays the fiddle.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia, II. (1590), 215.
| I wish to fire the trees of all these forrests; | |
| I giue the Sunne a last farewell each euening; | |
| I curse the fidling finders out of Musicke: | |
| With enuie I doo hate the loftie mountaines. |
1780. Cowper, Progr. Err., 111.
| Oh, laugh or mourn with me the rueful jest, | |
| A cassocked huntsman, and a fiddling priest! |
a. 1839. Praed, Poems (1864), I. 290, ‘The Modern Nectar.’
| He lighted by chance on a fiddling fellow | |
| Who never was known to be less than mellow. |
2. a. Of persons: Busy about trifles; addicted to futile and petty activity. b. Of things: Petty, trifling, unimportant; contemptible, futile.
a. 1660. S. Fisher, Rusticks Alarm, Wks. (1679), 374. Wilt thou sometimes flert at the Jews Fancies and Fopperies, and odd Conceits, and over-curious Carriages of themselves in Boyes Toyes, and at that which is the Fruit of their fidling Minds.
1673. Wycherley, Gentleman Dancing-Master, II. ii. If we don’t keep you off from us, but use you a little kindly, you grow so fiddling and so troublesome, there is no enduring you.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), II. i. 5. Hickman is a sort of fiddling, busy, yet, to borrow a word from you, unbusy man: has a great deal to do, and seems to me to dispatch nothing.
b. 1652. Sir E. Nicholas, in The Nicholas Papers (Camden), I. 301. Princess Royal, if I hear truth, is extreme weary of Lord Percy and speaks not kindly of him; but his bold and busy putting himself into every fidling business that relates to her makes him seem to be gracious with her.
a. 1672. Wood, Life (1848), 70. They esteemed a violin to be an instrument only belonging to a common fidler, and could not indure that it should come among them, for feare of making their meetings to be vaine and fidling.
1709. W. King, Ovid’s Art of Love, 62.
| One said her Fingers were most fitting | |
| For the most fidling Work of Knitting. |
a. 1745. Swift, Direc. to Servants, ii. Wks. (1778), II. 358. Good cooks cannot abide what they justly call fiddling work, where abundance of time is spent, and little done.
1886. J. R. Rees, The Pleasures of a Book-worm, v. 169. The quantity of fiddling, complaining criticism with which many of our so-called critical journals abound.
