Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Approx. 5000 Google hits for either “fussing around” or “futzing around”
“Futz around” is a slang term meaning “to waste time or effort on frivolities.” (Some sources cite a Yiddish origin for this word, so it would seem to be distinct from “fuss.”) The meaning of “fuss around” is “to move about in a busy fashion,” and seems to lack the negative connotation. I’d be hard pressed to determine whether the two expressions are used interchangeably at times. Given all that, I wonder if there is an eggcorn here—one way or the other.
Maybe I’ll dig up some examples later.
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There’s also “putzing around,” which the OED suggests may be an “alteration” (i.e., “eggcorn,” since it imports the meaning of the Yiddish “putz”) of the prior “futzing around.”
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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