Footle
//ˈfuːtəl// noun, verb
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 nonsense; foolishness. uncountable
Verb
- 1 To waste time; to trifle.
"Curtis says that he works like any other journalist: people and ideas grab him; he wastes time on TikTok, which he adores; he footles about in libraries."
- 2 act foolishly, as by talking nonsense wordnet
- 3 To talk nonsense.
- 4 be about a place without any apparent purpose wordnet
- 5 To have sex. archaic, vulgar
Example
More examples"Curtis says that he works like any other journalist: people and ideas grab him; he wastes time on TikTok, which he adores; he footles about in libraries."
Etymology
Probably variant of footer (“to screw around”), from obsolete fouter (“an act of sexual intercourse”), from French foutre (“to have sexual intercourse”), from Latin futuere.
Related phrases
More for "footle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.