Word.ws English Dictionary

faddling

faddling is the present participle and gerund of faddle.

Meaning of faddle

Verb

faddle (third-person singular simple present faddles, present participle faddling, simple past and past participle faddled)

  1. To fiddle (play aimlessly).
    • I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic has dubbed me, "a faddling hedonist" […]1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, quoting an anonymous reviewer in the Allahabad Pioneer, June 27, 1878, “Our Lady of the Snows – The Boarders”, in Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, page 99
    Synonyms:
    fiddle
  2. (UK, dated) To dote on.
    • Even then, when nurse is ready to take baby out for a walk, properly wrapped up, faddling Mamma comes to examine, if not a little corner remains to be closed to the air.1893, Sebastian Kneipp, My Water-cure Tested for Than 35 Years and Published for the Cure of Diseases and the Preservation of Health, page 26

Questions about faddling

What is faddling the present participle and gerund of?
Faddling is the present participle and gerund of faddle.

Words near faddling in the dictionary

  1. faddist
  2. faddists
  3. faddle
  4. faddled
  5. faddles
  6. faddling
  7. faddy
  8. fade
  9. fade away
  10. fade in
  11. fade ins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: faddling (page history and authors); faddle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “faddling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/faddling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.