English▸ verb [no object] spend time on unnecessarily complicated and time-consuming actions:
we can't faff around forever
there's no need to faff about plugging cables in
you might spend more time faffing with your camera than focusing on the scene.
▸ noun [in singular] an unnecessarily complicated and time-consuming task:
taking the time to compare prices may seem like a faff
there was the usual faff of getting back to the plane
[mass noun] it's too much faff for such a simple, homely dish.
– ORIGIN late 18th century (originally dialect in the sense ‘blow in puffs’, describing the wind): imitative. The current sense may have been influenced by dialect faffle ‘stammer, stutter’, later ‘flap in the wind’, which came to mean ‘fuss, dither’ at about the same time as faff (late 19th century).