puttering

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

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

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