fiddle away
phr. v..phr. v.. to waste time or money on small, unimportant things instead of doing something useful.
phr. v.. to squander or waste a resource, typically time or money, through trivial or aimless activity; often carries a connotation of negligence or lack of focus.
Don't fiddle away your afternoon on social media.
He managed to fiddle away his entire inheritance on gadgets and expensive dinners within just two years.
While the administration fiddled away the summer months in committee meetings, the window for effective intervention in the crisis slowly closed.
- Particles
- away
- Separability
- optional
- Pattern
- fiddle + away + object
usually takes a resource like 'time', 'money', or 'the hours' as a direct object.
connect this to the idiom 'fiddling while Rome burns' to help students understand the sense of wasting time during a serious situation.
He fiddled away to his time.He fiddled away his time.the phrase is transitive and takes a direct object immediately after the particle without a preposition.