FUTZING AROUND WITH WILLIAM SAFIRE
IN "ON LANGUAGE" FOR THE
NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
Flip-Flop
FUTZ BUDGET
"It is not true," said John Kerry, asked by two Times reporters about the White House claim that the invasion of Iraq had caused Libya's Muammar el-Qaddafi to abandon his nuclear plans. "That deal was on the table several years ago....No matter how much they bluster and futz, they can't fake it."

As an intransitive verb, futz is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as U.S. slang for "to loaf, waste time, mess around." It was first recorded in print by the novelist James T. Farrell in his 1936 "Studs Lonigan": "Studs kept futzing around until Helen Shire came out with her soccer ball." In the 1941 Budd Schulberg novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" the title character tells a budding playwright about his long-delayed play: "Don't futz around with it too long."

A week before the Kerry usage was reported, the New York Daily news music critic Howard Kissel quoted the soprano Arianna Zukerman about her intention to sing songs by Franz Schubert orchestrated by other composers: "You don't want to futz with Schubert songs....They're so beautiful, so complete."