fiddle

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To touch or play with something with your fingers, often nervously or aimlessly.

   Stop fiddling with your pen and pay attention.

2. 2
   noun

   A violin, especially when used for folk or traditional music.

   He learned to play the fiddle as a child.

3. 3
   verb

   To dishonestly change figures or records to get money illegally.

   He was caught fiddling the company accounts.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Fiddle was the usual Old English term for a stringed instrument resembling a violin. It is based on Latin vitulari, “to celebrate” or “be joyful,” which may in turn derive from Vitula, the Roman goddess of joy and victory. The verb later developed the sense “make aimless movements,” while its 17th-century sense “cheat or swindle” has an uncertain development.

From Middle English fithele, from Old English *fiþele, from Proto-West Germanic *fiþulā, from Proto-Germanic *fiþulǭ (“fiddle”), of uncertain etymology. Some contest that the Germanic terms are borrowed variations of Late Latin vitula (see viola); others contest that the word has a separate origin within Germanic languages, and still others believe that the Late Latin term for the stringed instrument is a borrowing from Germanic as a change of Latin t to Germanic þ is highly improbable, yet Germanic þ to Latin t is well documented (see troop, trousers, Teobaldo, etc.). Cognate with Old High Ge…

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