Fiddly means awkward to do because the parts are small. A fiddly job, fiddly little screws, fiddly to assemble.
It is British and describes difficulty of the hands rather than of the mind, so a fiddly task is easy to understand and hard to do. It is the standard complaint about flat-pack furniture and about wiring plugs.
1adjectivefiddlyAwkward to do because the parts are small.
“Tying the little ribbons on every gift bag was fiddly work.”
fiddly is a quality.
From the verb fiddle, to fidget or handle restlessly, plus -y.
Proto-Germanic
*fiþulǭ — fiddle
Proto-West Germanic
*fiþulā
Old English
*fiþele
Middle English
fithele
English
fiddle
English, today
fiddly
From fiddle + -y, from the verb. fiddle comes from Middle English fithele, from Old English fiþele, from Proto-West Germanic fiþulā, from Proto-Germanic fiþulǭ (“fiddle”), of uncertain etymology. Some contest that the Germanic terms are borrowed variations of vitula (see viola); others contest that the word has a separate origin within Germanic languages, and still others believe that the Late Latin term for the stringed instrument is a borrowing from Germanic as a change of Latin t to Germanic þ is highly improbable, yet Germanic þ to Latin t is well documented (see troop, trousers, Teobaldo, etc.). Cognate with Old High German fidula (German Fiedel), Middle Dutch vedele (Dutch vedel, veel), Old Norse fiðla (Icelandic fiðla, Danish fiddel, Norwegian fela, Swedish fela). The change from to in modern English is regular; compare Bedlam, staddle, swaddle (in brothel, it was prevented; see that entry for discussion).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA