quiddling
Twiddling, fiddling, piddling – there’s clearly something about an ‘-iddle’ that expresses the act of frittering time away. Quiddling, from the 17th century, has the added dimension of busying yourself with trivial tasks as a way of avoiding the proper ones.
spuddling
To spuddle, 17th-century style, is to work ineffectively and feebly, simply because your heart isn’t in it.
eyeservant
We all know one. We may even be one. An eyeservant is a worker who only really applies themselves when the boss is looking.
An ‘eyeservant’ is a worker who only really applies themselves when the boss is looking.
pick a salad
Imagine looking down at a plate of lettuce and idly stabbing at the leaves without much appetite at all. This is the metaphor behind ‘picking a salad’, which means half-heartedly applying oneself to a trivial occupation. One writer from the 16th century expressed it thus: ‘He that laboureth no thyng wholly but catcheth a patch of every thynge is mete to pycke a salad’.
futzing
There are arguably few pithier expressions for messing about and wasting time than ‘futzing’, recorded from the early 1900s. Its origin is elusive, although it may have begun with the Yiddish ‘arumfartsen’, to ‘fart about’. Wherever it came from, the very sound of ‘futzing’ is perfect for the act of achieving little.
fanfreluching it
The French ‘fanfreluches’ describes kitschy knick-knacks of little value, as well as light objects carried by the wind. Both ideas floated into English in the expression ‘fanfreluche it’, meaning ‘to trifle or act wantonly’.
niffle-naffling
Recorded in glossaries of Lincolnshire dialect, ‘niffle-naffling’ involves spending time with little purpose and to very little end. Think of social media and you’ll instantly get the idea.
‘Picking a salad’ means half-heartedly applying oneself to a trivial occupation.
fal-lalling
Like the fanfreluches, a ‘fal-lal’ is a frivolous bit of trumpery-finery and ornamentation. It follows, then, that to ‘fal-lal it’ is to pretend to be knuckling down whilst in fact dilly-dallying for England.
shaffling
Shaffling is the 19th-century equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. To shaffle is to vacillate, dither, and potter around the edges even as the world collapses.
boondoggle
The ultimate in futzing is surely the boondoggle: a trivial, over-expensive, and entirely unnecessary undertaking. A term with a hazy history – one theory has boondoggles as the braided leather lanyards worn by Boy Scouts, fiddly things to produce – it has really found its feet in the political sphere, where it describes a project with a huge budget that benefits no one. But its usefulness is undeniable, and used as noun or verb, ‘boondoggle’ is a lovely articulation of a complete and utter waste of time.
Want to hear more from Susie about the infinitely bizarre and fascinating world of language? She’s speaking to the top brass of British comedy and entertainment about just that, and it’s all free to listen to here on whynow.
