Friday, September 02, 2011

Time Wasting by Any Other Name

A new piece of research* reveals that the English have as many names for time wasting as the Eskimoes do for snow. Here's a few of them:
Faffing
Chuffing
Pootling (think you need to be walking for this one)
Fiddling
Footling
Havering
Dawdling
Dithering
Goofing
Prevaricating
Twittering
Bimbling
Bumbling
Pottering (slightly more purposeful, bit marginal this one)
Fritter
Dilly Dally
Mosey
Hanging Out
Checking my Emails

I'm sure there are plenty more (comments please). For a supposedly time-poor society, we do have a lot of ways of talking about not doing much. Oh yes, blogging. Add that.

*ok I just tweeted a few people

2 comments:

  1. You mean procrastinating, not prevaricating. I was once sent to the headmaster for punishment for "Prevarication and Procrastination". Prevaricating is what posh people do instead of lying.

    "Web surfing" is the obvious addition I can think of.

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  2. "Obvious" to me, I mean.

    ReplyDelete