The Russia Investigations: Facebook Makes Nice, Imbroglio Sucks In More Tech Firms
'The Emperor Nero has now taken power in Washington — and the British are having to smile and clap as he sets fires and reaches for his fiddle.'
How to Stop Time: A Meditation on Procrastination
We will never stop dawdling, so why should we feel guilty about it?
A scandal, which involved fiddling of expenses, has been embarrassing Canada's Conservative government for close to a year. Stephen Harper, the prime minister, has a well-earned reputation as a shrewd political strategist. The handling of the imbroglio proves there is an exception to every rule. The affair has exposed fissures in the Conservative party http://econ.st/1ciUaOq
Earnings Wizardry
If
you believe a recent academic study, one out of five U.S. chief
financial officers chiefs have been scrambling to fiddle with their
companies' earnings.
Google and the Western media in general have effectively turned this imbroglio into a clash of morals.
But China's efforts to censor and monitor the web represent a challenge to the uncontested hegemony of Western business and to the dominance of Silicon Valley in the world of new technologies. That story — of China's emergence and a burgeoning world of hungry entrepreneurs not willing to play second fiddle to America — is the backstory for the Google imbroglio and one that is about to assume center stage.
Even flawed bank rescues and stimulus plans, like the one Barack Obama signed into law this week, are aimed at the roots of the economy’s problems: saving the banks, no matter how undeserving they are, is supposed to keep finance flowing to all firms; fiscal stimulus is supposed to lift demand across the board. As manufacturing collapses, governments should not fiddle with sectoral plans. Their proper task is broader but no less urgent: to get on with spending and with freeing up finance.
那麼在英語中，violin與fiddle是否有別呢？一般認為，兩個名詞指的都是同一種樂器，只是演奏的音樂不同，前者通常用於古典與爵士，後者則擅於民謠、鄉村歌曲、藍草音樂（bluegrass）。言之似乎成理，看看《弦樂》（Strings）雜誌的刊頭語：「給小提琴（violin）、中提琴、大提琴、低音提琴與小提琴（fiddle）演奏者。」好像意味著violin與fiddle是兩種有所區別的東西？
想要進一步解開這層疑雲，不妨查查專業的葛羅夫音樂辭典，它如此定義fiddle：「用弓拉奏的弦樂器之統稱。」如此觀之，這個大家族其實包括小提琴與多種弦樂器，從薩哈拉以南的非洲單弦琴、北印度35條共鳴弦的薩朗吉（sarangi）到爪哇的極高音琴（rebab）都在此列。
西方古典音樂演奏者有時感性地將他們視為夥伴或同事的小提琴稱為fiddle，而在美國，fiddle則通常指稱用於拉奏愛爾蘭、蘇格蘭、法國傳統音樂與所有次生美式音樂，像阿帕拉契（Appalachian）、藍草、印地安音樂的小提琴。表面上，這些音樂在技術層面好像比古典音樂簡單一些，很多提琴手甚至從未離開第一把位。但別忘了，fiddle也代表製造旋律與節奏的高強技藝，讓人想要翩翩起舞，即使只是聆聽一段演奏得宜的調子，都會讓人或彈指、或點頭、或踏地的隨之搖擺——其中精義，通常莫過於使用基本二段體（AABB）組成的韻律性動機或流轉的旋律，簡單的結構，也為變奏與即興留下充足空間，演奏者用細緻的運弓與精巧的變化詮釋它們，藝術層次盡在其中。
在非裔美國音樂中，還有另一種fiddle的傳統：爵士與藍調於20世紀合流之前，已有偏好使用fiddle與斑鳩琴（banjo）更甚於吉他的黑人弦樂團，到了1920與1930年代，這些團體會在自己的錄音上將小提琴列為演奏樂器之一，最知名者如創作名曲《Sitting on Top of the World》的Mississippi Sheiks（Lonnie Chatmon演奏小提琴、Walter Vinson演奏吉他並演唱）；1928年Johnson Boys的錄音裡，吉他與小提琴手Lonnie Johnson還敦促道：「小提琴，為我唱藍調吧！」（Violin, sing the blues for me!）
NOUN
- 1informal A violin.
- 2British informal An act of defrauding, cheating, or falsifying.‘a major mortgage fiddle’
- 3British informal A small task that seems awkward and unnecessarily complex.‘inserting a tape is a bit of a fiddle’
- 4Nautical
A ledge or raised rim that prevents things from rolling or sliding off a table in rough seas.
VERB
- 1no object Touch or fidget with something in a restless or nervous way.‘Lena fiddled with her cup’
- 1.1 Tinker with something in an attempt to make minor adjustments or improvements.‘he fiddled with the blind, trying to prevent the sun from shining in her eyes’
- 1.2fiddle aroundPass time aimlessly, without doing or achieving anything of substance.
- 1.1 Tinker with something in an attempt to make minor adjustments or improvements.
- 2British informal with object Falsify (figures, data, or records), typically in order to gain money.‘everyone is fiddling their expenses’
- 3informal no object Play the violin.
Phrases
- fiddle while Rome burns
- Be concerned with relatively trivial matters while ignoring the serious or disastrous events going on around one.
- (as) fit as a fiddle
- In very good health.
- on the fiddle
- informal Engaged in cheating or swindling.
- play second fiddle
- Have a subordinate role to someone or something; be treated as less important than someone or something.‘the story line plays second fiddle to the action’‘she is tired of playing second fiddle to her thoughtless friend’
Origin
Old English fithele, denoting a violin or similar instrument (originally not an informal or depreciatory term), related to Dutch vedel and German Fiedel, based on Latin vitulari ‘celebrate a festival, be joyful’, perhaps from Vitula, the name of a Roman goddess of joy and victory. Compare with viol.
dawdle
Line breaks: daw¦dle
n., pl., -glios.
- A difficult or intricate situation; an entanglement.
- A confused or complicated disagreement.
- A confused heap; a tangle.
[Italian, from Old Italian, from imbrogliare, to tangle, confuse : in-, in (from Latin; see in-2) + brogliare, to mix, stir (probably from Old French brooiller, brouiller; see broil2).]
A fiddle is a violin. As a verb, to fiddle means not only ‘to play the violin,’ but also ‘to make fussy movements with your hands.’ Figuratively, to fiddle means ‘to manipulate something in order to adjust it.’ Colloquially, and often followed by the preposition around, to fiddle means ‘to waste time.’ In British English, to fiddle means ‘to cheat or falsify’ and the related noun fiddle means ‘a fraud.’
second fiddle
n. Informal
- A secondary role.
- One who plays a secondary role.
Etymology
In an orchestra, the first violins carry the main melody while second violins are considered to be in a subordinate position. Earliest documented use: 1809.
Usage
"He [Bollywood actor Navin Nischol] was known to be egoistic and did not want to play second fiddle to any actor." — Bharati Dubey; Navin Nischol Did Not Play Second Fiddle to Any Actor; The Times of India (New Delhi); Mar 20, 2011.
Lollywood - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lollywood
The Lollywood (Urdu: لالی وُڈ ), is the oldest film industry of Pakistani cinema based in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Between 1929 and 2007, Lahore was the center of Pakistani cinema, producing films in both Punjabi and Urdu languages. Since 2007 however, Karachi has largely overtaken Lahore in Urdu film productions.to make small changes to something to try to make it work:
Stop fiddling about with your hair - it looks fine.
Someone's been fiddling around with my computer!
Rothschild's Fiddle
IT WAS a tiny town, worse than a village, inhabited chiefly by old people who so seldom died that it was really vexatious. Very few coffins were needed for the hospital and the jail; in a word, business was bad. If Yakov Ivanov had been a maker of coffins in the county town, he would probably have owned a house of his own by now, and would have been called Mr. Ivanov, but here in this little place he was simply called Yakov, and for some reason his nickname was Bronze. He lived as poorly as any common peasant in a little old hut of one room, in which he and Martha, and the stove, and a double bed, and the coffins, and his joiner's bench, and all the necessities of housekeeping were stowed away.Beside what he received for his work as a joiner, he added a little to his income by playing the violin. There was a Jewish orchestra in the town that played for weddings, led by the tinsmith Moses Shakess, who took more than half of its earnings for himself.
"Yakov!" cried Martha unexpectedly, "I am dying!"
He looked round at his wife. Her face was flushed with fever and looked unusually joyful and bright. Bronze was troubled, for he had been accustomed to seeing her pale and timid and unhappy. It seemed to him that she was actually dead, and glad to have left this hut, and the coffins, and Yakov at last. She was staring at the ceiling, with her lips moving as if she saw her deliverer Death approaching and were whispering with him.
On the fiddle
Meaning
Engaged in a fraud.Origin
'Fiddling' is usually meant to mean 'cheating in a petty way', perhaps falsifying one's expenses or not declaring all of one's taxable income. Of course, a fiddle is also a slang term for violin.There are a couple of proposed derivations of the 'cheating' meaning of the phrase 'on the fiddle', each of them having supporters who are firm in their belief. Let's take the oldest first. The expression is said by some to derive from the Emperor Nero, who famously 'fiddled while Rome burned' and was a byword for corruption and dishonesty. The second suggestion is that the 'fiddle' was the name of the raised edge of the square wooden plates used by sailors. If a sailor took a normal amount of food he was said to have a 'square meal' and if his plate was overflowing he was said to be 'on the fiddle'.
As
is often the case, I only set up those suggestions in order to knock them down.
The Nero story is mere fancy. It may be a nice play on words that he was 'on the
fiddle' in both senses, that is, he was both corrupt and a violinist (actually
he wasn't even a violinist, there being no such instrument in Nero's lifetime,
but let's not get sidetracked) but that's all this tale has going for
it.The culinary procedures on board sailing ships don't offer much of an explanation either. The idea that sailors' plates had raised edges and that these were called fiddles is quite incorrect. There were fiddles in sailing ships' galleys but those were arrangements of small posts and strings arranged around the edges of tables that were used to stop plates falling on the floor in rough weather.
If the above isn't enough to convince then the fact that 'on the fiddle' in the 'acting fraudulently' meaning is a mid-20th century idiom should clinch it. The expression wasn't known in the age of sail and certainly not in ancient Rome. A good place to look for a phrase like 'on the fiddle', with its association with minor crime, would be court records, and if the expression were in common use in English it might be expected to be found in the database of cases provided by the Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey. This is a comprehensive record of all the criminal cases brought to the court between 1674 and 1913, and no one was accused in The Bailey of being 'on the fiddle' during all that time.
The term 'fiddle' appears to have originated in America. It is recorded in an 1874 edition of John Hotten's Slang Dictionary:
Fiddle... In America, a swindle or an imposture.Hotten also included this entry:
Fiddler... A sharper, a cheat; also one who dawdles over little matters, and neglects great ones.
'On the fiddle' was taken up by the British forces in WWII.
It was well enough established in popular slang in the UK by 1961 for it to have
been used as the title of a Sean Connery film and that is the first example of
it that I've found in print. The plot involved a young Connery playing a
streetwise rough diamond who runs various street scams while
serving in the British army.See also:
On the ball
On the bubble
On the nose
On the QT
On the wagon
On the warpath
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