Footle

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈfuːtəl/

Definitions

1. To spend time idly or wastefully while also making uncoordinated movements or handling objects in a careless way
2. Engaging in pointless or frivolous tasks while also exhibiting awkwardness in physical interactions or manipulations
3. To pass time in a lazy or unproductive manner ; to manipulate objects in a careless or unskillful way

Etymology: "Footle" carries a bawdy ancestry that its gentle modern sense hides. The likely source is "footer," an English verb meaning to fiddle about or mess around, which in turn probably derives from the obsolete noun "fouter," meaning an act of sexual intercourse. That noun came from the French "foutre," to have sexual intercourse, which descends from the Latin "futuere," with the same sexual meaning. The path from that vulgar root to idle fumbling is a common kind of semantic drift: a word for a coarse physical act gradually weakens into one for aimless activity, with the sexual sense dropping away. Today "footle" describes wasting time or handling things carelessly, with nothing of the original indecency left except in its history.

Synonyms: fool, dawdle, waste time

Antonyms: focus, concentrate