To fiddle about a thing means to “play” business. To fiddle with one’s fingers is to move them about as a fiddler moves his fingers up and down the fiddle-strings.
“Mere trifling, or unprofitable fidding about nothing.”—Barrow: Sermons, vol. i. sermon 7.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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