Fiddle v.

[f. prec. sb.]

  1.  intr. To play the fiddle or violin; now only in familiar or contemptuous use. Also fig.

1377.  Langl., P. Pl., B. XIII. 231.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 159/2. Fydelin, or fyielyn, vitulor.

1530.  Palsgr., 549/1. Can you fyddell and playe upon a tabouret to?

1628.  Ford, The Lover’s Melancholy, V. i.

a. 1661.  Fuller, Worthies (1662), 120. This man [John Smith] could not fidle, could not Tune himself to be pleasant and plausible to all Companies.

1742.  Pope, The Dunciad, IV. 598.

1836.  W. Irving, Astoria, I. xiii. 139. They feast, they fiddle, they drink, they sing, they dance, they frolic and fight, until they are all as mad as so many drunken Indians.

  b.  quasi-trans. with cognate obj. In quot. fig.

1377.  Langl., P. Pl., B. XIII. 445.

1870.  The Universe, 21 May. We had used to say they were ignorant, but now when we see a … monk-taught boy we fiddle another tune.

  c.  trans. with adverbs (nonce-uses).

1532.  More, Confut. Barnes, VIII. Wks. 739/2. All maner of people be he pope or pedeler … monke or myller, frere or fideler, or anye of the remenaunt that thys fonde frere fiddeleth forth here by letters.

1593.  Nashe, Christ’s Teares, 39 b. Blowne vp honour, honour by anticke fawning fidled vp, honour bestowed for damned deserts.

1649.  G. Daniel, Trinarch., To the Reader, 163.

1854.  Fraser’s Mag., LXIX. April, 403/1. He [Thackeray] had thus every prospect of becoming the cheif musician in that impulsive band which proposed to fiddle down the walls of our social Jericho, at a weekly charge, at per line, for caricatures and pathos.

  2.  techn. (See quot.)

1883.  Gill, in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), XVI. 244, s.v. Micrometer, Each movable web must pass the other without coming in contact with it or the fixed wire and without rubbing on any part of the brass-work. Should either fault occur (technically called ‘fiddling’) it is fatal to accurate measurement.

  3.  To make aimless or frivolous movements; esp. to play, toy about, at, on, over, with (a thing, rarely, a person); to act idly or frivolously. Also to fiddle about.

1530.  Palsgr., 549/1. Loke you fydell nat with your handes whan your maister speketh to you.

1604.  T. Wright, Passions, IV. ii. § 3. 133. Some men you haue alwaies fidling about their garments.

1663.  Pepys, Diary, 13 July. I followed them up into White Hall, and into the Queen’s presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another’s by one another’s heads, and laughing.

1709.  W. King, Ovid’s Art of Love, XII. 12.

1738.  Swift, Polite Convers., ii. He took a pipe in his hand, and fiddled with it till he broke it.

1741.  Betterton, Eng. Stage, v. 64. Some are perpetually fidling about their Cloaths, so that they are scarce dressed till they go to Bed, which is an Argument of a childish and empty Mind.

1761.  Mrs. F. Sheridan, Sidney Bidulph (1767), IV. 134. I had pretended to be fiddling at it all the time we were at tea.

1855.  Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi, 12.

1883.  H. Smart, Hard Lines, I. iii. They’ve had him fiddling about so long in the school, he’s most likely forgot how to gallop.

1884.  The Saturday Review, LVIII. 12 July, 40/1. The historian at least will rejoice, if he be either of a sarcastic or of a moralizing turn, in this spectacle of a Ministry fiddling with Franchise Bills and contracting for demonstrations, while a single English regiment has been sent unsupported in the most trying of climates to stem a probable invasion of unknown force, and while negotiations are proceeding for the transfer of Egypt from England which has won it, and is still to have the responsibility of governing it, to Europe which has done nothing, and proposes to do nothing, in the nature of a stroke of work on the matter.

  b.  slang. (Sse quot.)

1851.  Mayhew, Lond. Labour, I. 199/1. A lad that had been lucky fiddling (holding horses or picking up money anyhow).

  c.  trans. To fiddle away: to fritter away.

1667.  H. More, Divine Dialogues, II. xiv. (1713), 132. And how few, I pray you, amongst many Thousands do seriously spend their studies in any thing weightily Moral or Intellectual, but fiddle away their time as idlely as those that pill Straws or tie knots on Rushes in a fit of Deliration or Lunacy?

1861.  Beresf. Hope, Eng. Cathedr. 19th. C., vi. 220–1. The commonplace way of treating it is that of simply fiddling it away.

  4.  a. trans. To cheat, swindle. Now only slang. Also with into, out of. b. intr. (see quot. 1850).

1604.  Dekker, Honest Wh., Wks. 1873, II. 170. There was one more that fiddled my fine Pedlers, and that was my wife.

1703.  De Foe, The Villainy of Stock-jobbers, Misc. 268. These People can ruin Men silently, undermine and impoverish by a sort of impenetrable Artifice, like Poison that works at Distance, can wheedle Men to ruin themselves, and Fiddle them out of their Money, by the strange unheard of Engines of Interest, Discounts, Transfers, Tallies, Debentures, Shares, Projects, and the Devil and all of Figures and hard Names.

1738.  Chesterf., Common Sense, 14 Oct. I heard some Persons, equally skill’d in Musick and Politicks, assert, that King James was sung and fiddled out of this Kingdom by the Protestant Tune of Lillybullero;—and that Somebody else would have been fiddled into it again, if a certain treasonable Popish, Jacobite Tune had not been timely silenced by the unwearied Pains and Diligence of the Administration.

1850.  Lloyd’s Weekly, 3 Feb. (Farmer). I understand fiddling—that means, buying a thing for a mere trifle and selling it for double or for more.

1851.  Mayhew, Lond. Labour, I. 424. The way the globe man does is to go among the old women and fiddle (humbug) them. Ibid. (1861), III. 130. We are generally fiddled most tremendous.

  5.  slang. To take liberties with (a woman).

1632.  Chapman & Shirley, Ball, II. iii. Fiddling ladies, you molecatcher!