putter

Verb (1)

putter (third-person singular simple present putters, present participle puttering, simple past and past participle puttered)

1. (intransitive) To be active, but not excessively busy, at a task or a series of tasks.
   • We tiptoed into the house, up the stairs and along the hall into the room where the Professor had been spending so much of his time. 'Twas locked, of course, but the Deacon man got a big bunch of keys out of his pocket and commenced to putter with the lock.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, pages 304–305

Noun (1)

UK/ˈpʊtə(ɹ)/US/ˈpʊtɚ/

putter (plural putters)

1. One who puts or places.
   • He was a model of anal defensiveness: fastidious in his dress and appearance, a collector and putter of things in order, a classifier and labeler.1995, Leonard Shengold, Delusions of Everyday Life, page 39
   • […] for example, Gleitman (1990:30), in support of her claim for universal alignments of syntax and semantics, argues for the universal naturalness of three arguments for 'put' verbs (a putter, a puttee, and a location).2012, Anetta Kopecka, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Events of Putting and Taking: A Crosslinguistic Perspective, page 55
2. A shot-putter.
3. One who pushes the small wagons in a coal mine, to transport the coal mined by the getter.

Noun (2)

putter (plural putters)

1. A golf club specifically intended for a putt.
2. A person who is taking a putt or putting.

Verb (2)

putter (third-person singular simple present putters, present participle puttering, simple past and past participle puttered)

1. (intransitive) To produce intermittent bursts of sound in the course of operating.
   • By the time the engine had puttered and died Atkins and some of the others were out of the trenches and walking towards this new wonder machine.2010, Pat Kelleher, “‘Some Corner of a Foreign Field …’”, in Black Hand Gang (No Man’s World), Osney Mead, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Abaddon Books, →ISBN
   • Timmy's dad drove an old blue truck that puttered and sputtered to get to the top of the mountain, that led to the valley, where … the WILDCAT waited.2010 June 14, Dan Newton, The Wildcat, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN