Puttering

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Generating a range of light, repetitive noises or motions
2. Emitting soft sounds while operating mechanical equipment
3. Producing quiet, uneven sounds repeatedly; engaging in slow, leisurely activity without specific purpose

Etymology: The verb "putter" has a surprisingly tangled ancestry. Its sense of pottering about idly comes from "potter", which is itself closely related to "putter" in form and meaning, and the two were long confused. Its earliest English ancestor, the Old English "putian", meant to push or thrust, and it ran through Middle English "putten" before the modern sense of dawdling over small jobs took shape. The idle, fiddling sense of the word emerged as an alteration of "potter", so the two verbs became entangled in usage. The golf club called a putter is a separate word, formed from "put" plus the agent ending "-er", meaning the club used to put the ball into the hole. Because golf and the idle sense share a basic sound and a sense of gentle, unhurried action, dictionaries keep them apart by listing them as distinct entries. The word's sound may also owe something to imitation. Its source classes it as onomatopoeic, so the rhythm of repeated little movements may have shaped it from the start.

Synonyms: fiddling, dawdling, tinkering

Antonyms: rushing, hurrying, expediting