fiddly
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈfɪdli/
rhymes: -ɪdli
Forms: form: fiddlier
form: fiddliest
Etymology: From fiddle + -y, from the verb.
Senses: examples: text: The buttons on the tiny mobile phone were too fiddly.
text: Today around 90 percent of people use Zawgyi instead of Unicode.
Incompatible without fiddly plug-ins, it only allows people to communicate in Burmese with other Zawgyi users, excluding the nation’s minority languages. Its clunkiness also means search functions do not work, crippling data storage systems.
ref: 2019 September 27, “Unicode in, Zawgyi out: Modernity finally catches up in Myanmar's digital world”, in The Japan Times, archived from the original on 22 Aug 2020:
glosses: Requiring dexterity to operate.
examples: text: See, Barbados, like certain other fiddly little islands— Antigua, Saint Lucia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, Great Britain, Australia— is filled with a genus of hotspurs fiercely dedicated to motoring on the wrong side of the road.
ref: 1988, Road & Track - Volume 40, page 119:
text: But the draping roses, and the double bell of dress and overskirt — fiddly, too bloody fiddly!
ref: 2004, John Charalambous, Furies, →ISBN, page 189:
text: Plate after plate of fiddly Lebanese mezes that tasted of lemon and breadcrumbs and chopped coriander rather than the tidbits of lamb and beef and prawns that they covered, the whole tedious meal made only bearable by a very creditable Château Musar.
ref: 2012, Martin O'Brien, The Dying Minutes, →ISBN, page 182:
text: The cover, which was also the title page, promised an exhaustive collection of lists, tables, “extraordinary matches” and “other interesting information”, but the most cursory flick-through revealed only a sequence of cricket scorecards and a summary of the game's already fiddly laws.
ref: 2013, Robert Winder, The Little Wonder: The Remarkable History of Wisden, →ISBN:
glosses: Having many small bits or embellishments.
examples: text: I can divide my movements into two types: gross motor and fine motor (in other words, large movements and small, fiddly movements) and, as I have already described, I have far more problems with the latter than the former.
ref: 2012, Terry Rummins, So, I've Got Parkinson's Disease, page 62:
glosses: Of or relating to fiddling or fidgeting.
examples: text: Because benefit dependence was understood to confine people to poverty ('bend the rules - you've got to in this world cause of the pittance you get off the government') and because doing fiddly work indicated a commitment to self-reliance ('at least they're working') it was widely condoned.
ref: 2005, R. MacDonald, J. Marsh, Disconnected Youth?: Growing up in Britain’s Poor in Neighbourhoods, →ISBN:
text: The other mjinority group has, by being members of the appropriate social networks, access to fiddly jobs.
ref: 2007, Justin Cruickshank, Realism and Sociology, →ISBN:
text: None of the normal conditions of employment (for example health and safety regulations, training, sickness benefits, etc.) were afforded to fiddly workers and when some suffered industrial injuries (at the steel works) no compensation was forthcoming.
ref: 2016, Richard K. Brown, The Changing Shape of Work, →ISBN, page 117:
glosses: Pertaining to occasional under-the-table work by people who receive unemployment benefits
Derived terms: fiddliness