Sunday, March 7, 2010

Just Phaffing Around A Bit

I was phaffing around a bit, pretending to look at recipes and the like, and came upon a word I had never heard of. In a description of what this woman liked to do she put "faffing". I kind of guessed what it was, but decided to look it up. A friend of mine introduced me to the online urban dictionary so I gave it a go. Sure enough, there was "faffing". There were several entries and the final two were sort of unsavory and most of them alluded to the fact that it was sort of a synonym to the other f word. But there was also this alternative word, "phaffing." Of course, being the phonetic genius that I am, I recognized that this was indeed the same word. This definition of phaffing was much softer and what I was looking for:

Activity that looks (to the casual observer) like work (or another task) but is not really all that productive, and in fact may be time wasting.

This dictionary gives examples on how to use the word, and/or a sentence with it being used. It will quote famous people using the word as well. So, I'm done phaffing around now, and will get to bed because I have things to do tomorrow...

But, I'll leave you with this challenge (and it's not that tough): give me a word to update my vocabulary, because obviously I'm behind in the times. You might be hip, or maybe you need to visit the urban dictionary for yourself. Either way, go phaf around a bit and make me laugh.

3 comments:

H said...

I forgot... you should use the word in an original sentence of your own here...

proud parents said...

First opening the website, I saw "toilet mummy." I liked that one, but it didn't seem original enough. So hitting the random button a couple dozen times generated this word:

Dimebagged.

H, you really dimebagged the word phaffing!

Sara said...

Holy cow, I think this word describes my husbands entire career!