fiddly

Adjective

fiddly (comparative fiddlier, superlative fiddliest)

1. Requiring dexterity to operate.
   • The buttons on the tiny mobile phone were too fiddly.
   • 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...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
2. (broadly) Having many small bits or embellishments.
   • 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.1988, Road & Track - Volume 40, page 119
   • But the draping roses, and the double bell of dress and overskirt — fiddly, too bloody fiddly!2004, John Charalambous, Furies, →ISBN, page 189
3. Of or relating to fiddling or fidgeting.
   • 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.2012, Terry Rummins, So, I've Got Parkinson's Disease, page 62
4. Pertaining to occasional under-the-table work by people who receive unemployment benefits
   • 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.2005, R. MacDonald, J. Marsh, Disconnected Youth?: Growing up in Britain’s Poor in Neighbourhoods, →ISBN
   • The other mjinority group has, by being members of the appropriate social networks, access to fiddly jobs.2007, Justin Cruickshank, Realism and Sociology, →ISBN