fiddling

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English

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Verb

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fiddling

  1. present participle and gerund of fiddle
    He was fiddling while Rome burned.

Noun

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fiddling (plural fiddlings)

  1. action of the verb to fiddle
    • 1973, Oliver Sacks, Awakenings:
      [W]e, her doctors [] seemed powerless to prevent [side-effects], despite all our reassurances, and all our fiddlings and manipulations with the dosage []
    • 2023 March 8, Howard Johnston, “Was Marples the real railway wrecker?”, in RAIL, number 978, pages 52–53:
      Was it deliberate that the first week of October 1961 was chosen to conduct a national survey of passenger usage? Why October of all months, when the holiday season was over and families back at work and at school? Was this a fiddling of the figures to make an unfair case against rail-dependent resorts such as those in the West Country, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire, where previously overloaded summer services would now only have a handful of locals on board?

Adjective

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fiddling

  1. Of petty or trivial importance; footling
    It was a fiddling little fault, but ultimately proved disastrous.