footle about

  • 1footle about — verb To pass time doing unimportant things; messing around. Syn: footle around, mess around, mess about …

    Wiktionary

  • 2footle around — verb To pass time doing unimportant things; messing around. Syn: footle about, mess around, mess about …

    Wiktionary

  • 3footle away — verb To waste time. Syn: footle about …

    Wiktionary

  • 4footle — ► VERB chiefly Brit. ▪ engage in fruitless activity; mess about. ORIGIN perhaps from FOOTER(Cf. ↑footer) …

    English terms dictionary

  • 5footle — foo|tle [ futl ] verb intransitive INFORMAL footle around/about to waste time doing things that are not important or necessary …

    Usage of the words and phrases in modern English

  • 6footle — verb footle around/about to waste time doing unimportant things when you should be working …

    Longman dictionary of contemporary English

  • 7footle — 1. verb a) To waste time; to trifle. b) To talk nonsense. Syn: hang around, lallygag, loiter, lollygag, mess about, mill about, mill around …

    Wiktionary

  • 8footle — [ fu:t(ə)l] verb chiefly Brit. engage in fruitless activity; mess about. Origin C19: perh. from dialect footer idle, potter about , from C16 foutre worthless thing , from OFr., lit. have sexual intercourse with …

    English new terms dictionary

  • 9footle — [19] Footling appears to have originated as a euphemistic equivalent to fucking. It probably comes from a dialectal footer ‘mess about, fuck around’, which may well have been acquired from French foutre ‘copulate with’, a descendant of Latin… …

    The Hutchinson dictionary of word origins

  • 10footle — [19] Footling appears to have originated as a euphemistic equivalent to fucking. It probably comes from a dialectal footer ‘mess about, fuck around’, which may well have been acquired from French foutre ‘copulate with’, a descendant of Latin… …

    Word origins