Fušování is a Czech word I discovered recently that appealed to me and that means “tinker, dabbling”. The related verb, fušovat means “to potter, to tinker at, to botch, to dabble, to mess about, to tinker”. Other related words include:
– fušer – quack, tinker, blunderer, boggler, botcher, bungler, cobbler, dabbler
– fušerská práce – botch
– fušersky – shoddily
– fušerský – empirical, patch work
– fušersky pracovat – tamper
– fušerství – botch, fudge, bungle
– fušeřina – patch work, tinker, botch
– fuška – elbow-grease
– fuška – job, chore, elbow-grease, hard work (also – dřina)
Sources: slovnik.cz, Wiktionary
These words could be used to describe the way I teach myself languages – I tend to do this is quite a haphazard way without any particular plan, and just follow my interests, and never know quite where I’ll end up. I keep thinking that perhaps I should try to learn things in a more structured way, but somehow rarely put such thoughts into practise. Languages are a hobby and passion for me. I dabble with them for fun.
Do you dabble or tinker with languages? Are you a linguistic botcher / bungler / tinkerer / dabbler? Or do you approach them in a more structured and focused way?
The accute accent in the infinitive is incorrect, it should be fušovat.
Is this word related to English ‘fuss’?
I’ve dabbled a bit and although it’s tons of fun the problem is that if you do that you’ll never really get fluent/competent in any language, so I’ve had to discipline myself a bit and make myself focus on just one at a time until I achieve the desired competency in it, then I’ll move onto the next.
Cheers,
Andrew
According to the OED, fuss is “Perhaps echoic of the sound of something sputtering or bubbling, or expressive of the action of ‘puffing and blowing’.” So it probably isn’t related to the Czech word.
Sounds quite like German “Pfusch” (botch, bungling), interaction between the languages have been quite frequent
German “Pfusch” is indeed the origin of Czech “fušovat”.