sb. and a. [Short for FIDDLE-FADDLE.]
A. sb. a. One who gives fussy attention to trifles. b. A petty matter of detail, a crotchet.
1754. The World, No. 95, 24 Oct. The youngest, who thinks in her heart that her sister is no better than a Slattern, runs into the contrary extreme, and is, in everything she does, an absolute Fidfad.
1875. Mrs. Lynn Linton, Patricia Kemball, II. 31. The fidfads, called improvements, which were not wanted and seldom properly managed.
1881. B. W. Richardson, Health at Home, in Good Words, XXII. 52/2. There is old Hypo with his vast wealth and horror of fever. He built himself a house, and fitted it with every fid-fad that could be suggested, and he had not been in the new place six months before two or three of his unfortunate family were stricken with fever.
B. adj. Frivolous, fussy, petty.
1830. R. Hill, in E. Sidney, Life (1834), 351. With the tinkling cymbal fid-fad musicians may try to tickle the fancy of such half-witted admirers.
1844. Blackw. Mag., LV. Feb., 199/1. From exuberant 4to, down to the fid-fad concentration of 12mo—from crown demy to diamond editions—no end to these chartered documentations of the sex!
