Separated by a Common Language: UK-to-US Word of the Year 2025: fiddly

The 2025 Separated by a Common Language US-to-UK Word of the Year is:

fiddly

Here's an English teacher
explaining the word

Someone might have recommended this to me this year—if so, please out yourself in the comments, since I cannot find a pixel trail for a recommender. But I did find it in an email conversation I had with Ben Yagoda in deciding the 2022 WotY, where he said:

Interesting slate of UK to US candidates, especially “soccer.” Didn’t realize about shrinkflation. Fiddly definitely.

Why did I wait till this year to crown fiddly SbaCL WotY? Well, in 2022, fit was having a moment due to Love Island, so I put fiddly aside. Now fiddly's time has come. Just look at it going up in the US part of the News on the Web corpus:

NOW corpus bar chart for fiddly in US news only. There's a peak in 2024 with .24 occurrences per million, but then it goes down into the decimal-point-teens for the next 9 years. Up to .20 in 2024, then a high point .29 in 2025

Ben Yagoda first wrote about it as a Britishism in the US in 2016, after its first peak; then the shine went off it for a few years. Now it's back. Here are the most recent ten US citations from the NOW corpus:

45 25-12-05 US macrumors.com time, it was left in the hotel room because it's too big and fiddly. # Plus the phone has the instant gratification factor. The family pretty much 46 25-12-09 US pressherald.com patterns. For starters, more than one-third of the items I'd attempted required fiddly stuffing and/or rolling: spring rolls, jelly roll cake, onigiri, stuffed grape 47 25-12-11 US geeky-gadgets.com Pro was a point of contention for many users; it was often described as fiddly and difficult to clean. The Galaxy Buds 4 Pro will revert to the " 48 25-12-13 US slate.com This is not a game, " Jud shouts at Blanc, " not some fiddly mystery with devices and clues " -- a very apt characterization of locked-room puzzles. 49 25-12-14 US wired.com flaps reduce spray, so anyone behind you doesn't suffer. Installation can be fiddly, and it took me at least an hour, so if bike maintenance is 50 25-12-17 US kotaku.com from the console's mouse controls, which will make placing decor a bit less fiddly. And that makes sense, paired with a content update that's largely centered 51 25-12-20 US slate.com # Advertisement Rebel Against Royal Icing # Contemporary Christmas cookie recipes are rife with fiddly frostings and icings, and it's true that these are what make decorative varieties 52 25-12-22 US androidauthority.com needed. In practice, that should make Eden feel a bit cleaner and less fiddly, especially on lower-end or storage-constrained devices. # This update also expands the scope 53 25-12-26 US slashgear.com occupant protection. # It got the next-best grade of' acceptable' for a fiddly LATCH infant seat system and a minor concern about rear passenger restraints, and the 54 25-12-26 US vogue.com ottoman couches as you're breezed through check-in. There's no reception, or fiddly paperwork. Instead, it feels just like you're visiting the holiday residence of

Many things and activities here are fiddly: some kind of electronic device, rolling and stuffing a baked good, cleaning ear buds, a fictional mystery story, installing something on a bike, actions in video games, frostings and icings on Christmas cookies, using an infant car seat, paperwork. It looks like it's being used just as it's used in BrE.

And if you haven't yet figured out what it means, Merriam-Webster's definition goes like this:

fiddly
adjective
fid·dly ˈfi-dᵊl-ē
chiefly British
: requiring close attention to detail : fussy
especially : requiring an annoying amount of close attention
… the tiny control buttons on the back are fiddly.—M. J. McNamara

As a -y adjective, it's a little odd, since -y is usually added to nouns. Fiddly derives (according to the OED) from the verb fiddle 'To make aimless or frivolous movements' (OED), not the noun. That verb does ultimately come from the noun fiddle, but that's not what's relevant to a suffix that usually attaches to nouns. The suffix wants something that's a noun now, as in cinnamon-y or snowy. But the OED tells us of -y adjectives:

Later new derivatives tend in a large measure to be colloquial, undignified, or trivial,as bumpy, dumpy, flighty, hammy, liney, loopy, lumpy, ungy, messy, oniony, treey, verminy, vipery; some are from verbs, as dangly.

Fiddly only came into being in the early 20th century, the period of "colloquial, undignified, or trivial" -y adjectives. And indeed the OED marks fiddly as "colloquial".

I'll be happy to have it in AmE, as it is undeniably useful. The Collins thesaurus offers some synonyms:

pernickety (=AmE persnickety), tricky, detailed, fine, exacting

I think tricky would work best for some of the things I call fiddly, but tricky seems to connote a challenge, rather than a hassle. Fiddly is all hassle, dexterity, and attention to detail.

Congratulations, fiddly. You've made it.

Separated by a Common Language

Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK

UK-to-US Word of the Year 2025: fiddly

fiddly

adjective

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