spuddle

1. (by extension, chiefly dialect) To shallowly dig or stir up in an unsystematic manner.Examples: "Instead of an "occasional gardener" to trim up the walks, and to hoe, your wife will be as happy as a queen, and your daughters as princesses, to spuddle about now and then, and have little flower gardens, and herb beds."; "Hee grubs and spuddles for his prey in muddy holes and obscure cauernes, my Mufe ferrits base debaushed wretches in their swinish dens."; "Leviathan fouls and spuddles again my possessions and my father's house"

2. (obsolete, Southern England) To make a lot of fuss about trivial things, as if they were importantExamples: "During all the years that I spuddled around in a porcelain bath tub in a city I was given to regarding the farmer somewhat as the caricaturist, who wears his spring overcoat all winter and sells jokes for 10 cents each to the newspapers, painted him."

3. (obsolete) To work ineffectively; to work hard but achieve nothingExamples: "In what glooın are you all left to spuddle out your way through the road of life?"; "Why you do spuddle So weak's a child. How you do muddle! Gi'e me the speäde."; ""There! that's how she do bide an' spuddle about," said Uncle Granger contemptuously."