faff
/faf
/British informal
verb [no object]
Spend time in ineffectual activity: we can’t faff around forever...
- I have spent all evening faffing with templates to produce my very own photo blog (am hoping it will be an incentive to take the camera out more often).
- I was worried I was going to spend the day faffing and not get anything done, but I picked up the phone and with some trepidation phoned my first choice farm.
- Or, I choose to spend my time faffing around on the computer, or cooking.
noun [in singular]
A great deal of ineffectual activity: there was the usual faff of getting back to the plane...
- It was a bit of a faff putting the tents up but we managed it.
- Puff pastry - frozen is less of a faff, but don't forget to defrost.
- Bit of a faff, and not very flexible, but it kind of worked.
Origin
Late 18th century (originally dialect in the sense 'blow in puffs', describing the wind): imitative. The current sense may have been influenced by dialect faffle 'stammer, stutter', later 'flap in the wind', which came to mean 'fuss, dither' at about the same time as faff (late 19th century).
Originally a dialect word for ‘blow in puffs or small gusts’, faff was describing the wind, imitating the sound. The current sense may have been influenced by dialect faffle initially meaning ‘stammer, stutter’, later ‘flap in the wind’, which came to mean ‘fuss or dither’ at about the same time as faff in the late 19th century.