Fiddler
['fɪdlə] or ['fɪdlɚ]
Definition
(n.) One who plays on a fiddle or violin.
(n.) A burrowing crab of the genus Gelasimus, of many species. The male has one claw very much enlarged, and often holds it in a position similar to that in which a musician holds a fiddle, hence the name; -- called also calling crab, soldier crab, and fighting crab.
(n.) The common European sandpiper (Tringoides hypoleucus); -- so called because it continually oscillates its body.
Checked by Laurie
Unserious Contents or Definition
A violinist before he becomes the virtuoso who refuses to play a real tune.
Checked by Leda
Examples
- The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with, and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was it? George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- Why do They Call Them Fiddler-Crabs? Various. The Wonder Book of Knowledge.
- There they are, like the four-and-twenty fiddlers--all of a row. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- At the upper end of the room, seated in a shady bower of holly and evergreens were the two best fiddlers, and the only harp, in all Muggleton. Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers.
- For, instead of a long train with royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers, and an Italian prelate. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
Checker: Lorenzo