Tinker vs Meddle - What's the difference?
tinker | meddle |
an itinerant tinsmith and mender of household utensils made of tin
(dated, chiefly, British, and, Irish, offensive) A member of the travelling community. A gypsy.
A mischievous person, especially a playful, impish youngster.
Someone who repairs, or attempts repair on anything mechanical (tinkers) or invents.
The act of repair or invention.
(military, obsolete) A small mortar on the end of a staff.
Any of various fish: the chub mackerel, the silverside, the skate, or a young mackerel about two years old.
A bird, the razor-billed auk.
(Webster 1913)
To fiddle with something in an attempt to fix, mend or improve it, especially in an experimental or unskilled manner.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01
, author=Robert M. Pringle
, title=How to Be Manipulative
, volume=100, issue=1, page=31
, magazine=
To work as a tinker.
(obsolete) To mix (something) with some other substance; to commingle, combine, blend.
*1590 , Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene , II.i:
*:he cut a locke of all their heare, / Which medling with their bloud and earth, he threw / Into the graue.
*:
*:But after god came to Adam and bad hym knowe his wyf flesshly as nature requyred / Soo lay Adam with his wyf vnder the same tree / and anone the tree whiche was whyte and ful grene as ony grasse and alle that came oute of hit / and in the same tyme that they medled to gyders there was Abel begoten / thus was the tree longe of grene colour
*, II.5.1.v:
*:Take a ram's head that never meddled with an ewe, cut off at a blow, and the horns only taken away, boil it well, skin and wool together.
(senseid)To interfere (in) or (with); to concern oneself with unduly.
*Bible, 2 Kings xiv.10:
*:Why shouldst thou meddle to thy hurt?
*John Locke
*:The civil lawyershave meddled in a matter that belongs not to them.
(obsolete) To interest or engage oneself; to have to do (with), in a good sense.
*Tyndale
*:Study to be quiet, and to meddle with your own business.
:(Barrow)
As a proper noun tinker
is for someone who mends pots and pans.As a verb meddle is
(obsolete) to mix (something) with some other substance; to commingle, combine, blend.tinker
English
Noun
(en noun)Synonyms
* (mischievous person) rapscallion, rascal, rogue, scamp, scoundrel * (member of the travelling community) travellerVerb
(en verb)citation, passage=As in much of biology, the most satisfying truths in ecology derive from manipulative experimentation. Tinker with nature and quantify how it responds.}}
