This week’s theme
Words from music

This week’s words
pitch-perfect
fanfare
downbeat
boogie
fiddle-faddle


This week’s comments
AWADmail 1143

Next week’s theme
Terms formed from names

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(FID-uhl-fad-uhl)

MEANING:

noun: Nonsense.
verb intr.: To trifle.

ETYMOLOGY:

Reduplication of fiddle, from Old English fithele, of obscure origin. Earliest documented use: 1577.

NOTES:

The fiddle gets no respect. The English language is full of idioms that downplay this fine instrument: to fiddle away (to squander one’s time), to fiddle around (to act aimlessly), or to fiddle with (to tamper, to handle something unskillfully). There are also the interjections fiddlesticks or fiddle-dee-dee, both meaning nonsense.
May I suggest we update the idiom to bagpipe: To bagpipe away, to bagpipe around, or to simply bagpipe, or to shout, “Bagpipes!”

USAGE:

“You’re wasting time, young man. All this fiddle-faddle about plots.”
Frances & Richard Lockridge; Dead as a Dinosaur; J.B. Lippincott; 1952.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: