[onomatopœic; prob. influenced in sense by association with FRIVOL.]
† 1. a. trans. To falter, stammer (out); also intr. with through. b. intr. To falter, totter in walking. Obs.
a. 1627. Middleton, Mayor of Queenborough, V. i. They speak but what they list of it, and fribble out the rest.
1640. Brome, Antipodes, II. i. Wks. 1873, III. 257.
| If he [the actor] can frible through, and move delight | |
| In others, I [the author] am pleas’d. |
1709. Steele, Tatler, No. 49, ¶ 8. How the poor Creature fribles in his Gate.
1848. Craig, Fribble … to totter like a weak person.
2. intr. In early use, to act aimlessly or feebly, to busy oneself to no purpose; to ‘fiddle,’ Now (exc. dial.) only in strongly contemptuous sense: To behave frivolously, trifle.
1640. Brome, Sparagus Garden, II. ii. Reb. As true as I live he fribles with mee sir Hugh.
1664. Butler, Hud., II. iii. 35.
| Though Cheats yet more intelligible | |
| Than those that with the Stars do fribble. |
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), VI. lxxviii. 378. He fribbled with his waistcoat buttons, as if he had been telling his beads.
1855. Thackeray, Newcomes, II. 27. Not as you treat these fools that are fribbling round about you.
1892. I. Zangwill, Bow Myst., 60. Who’s fribbling now, you or me, Cantercot?
1895. E. Anglian Gloss., Fribble, to fuss about.
b. trans. To fribble away: to throw away or part with lightly, fool away. To fribble out (nonce-use): to portray with purposeless minuteness.
1633. Shirley, Witty Fair One, IV. ii. Here is twenty pieces; you shall fribble them away at the Exchange presently.
a. 1834. Lamb, Final Mem., viii. Lett. to B. Barton. Rembrandt has painted only Belshazzar, and a courtier or two (taking a part of the banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a mob of fine folks.
1879. McCarthy, Own Times, I. x. 205. While Lord Melbourne and his Whig colleagues, still in office, were fribbling away their popularity on the pleasant assumption that nobody was particularly in earnest about anything.
1886. Fenn, The Master of the Ceremonies, I. xii. Don’t fribble away this season.
3. To frizz or frizzle (a wig). Sc.
1756. [see FRIBBLED ppl. a.].
1822. Galt, Steam-boat, xii. 296–7. The minister had a blockhead whereon he was wont to dress and fribble his wig.
Hence Fribbled ppl. a., Fribbling vbl. sb. and ppl. a. Also Fribbler, a trifler; Fribblery, frivolity.
1654. R. Whitlock, Ζωοτομια, 474. The gingling Eare, or Fancy, with whom Quibbles are the best Wit, may have Patterns exceeding ordinary Imitation, or Friblings of Wit.
1656. R. Fletcher, Martiall, iii. 63.
| What sayst? is this thy pretty man? this tool? | |
| He then that’s pretty’s but a fribling fool. |
a. 1680. Earl of Rochester, Poems (1691), 131.
| He yawns, as if he were but half awake; | |
| And fribling for free speaking, does mistake. |
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), A Fribbling Question.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 288, ¶ 2. A Fribbler is one who professes Rapture and Admiration for the Woman to whom he addresses, and dreads nothing so much as her Consent.
1756. Toldervy, Two Orphans, III. 106. It was a severe punishment to the fribbled jessamy waiter.
1873. H. Kingsley, Oakshott, xii. 278. He had been writing fribbling poetry.
1889. T. Wright, Chalice of Carden, xxxiii. 227. Why this waste of time, this wronging of himself, this reduction to a condition of fribblery?
