messer-abouter

From mess about with -er.

messer-abouter (plural messer-abouters)

1. (rare) One who messes about.
   • 1965, Eric Frank Russell, The Mindwarpers, New York, N.Y.: Prestige Books, published December 1972, page 127:

     He’s a gypsy, a wanderer, a general messer-abouter, here today and gone tomorrow and God only knows where the day after.

   • 1987, Phillip Brown, Schooling Ordinary Kids: Inequality, Unemployment, and the New Vocationalism, London, New York, N.Y.: Tavistock Publications, →ISBN, page 86:

     Alan: It’s obvious really isn’t it? If you haven’t got nothing [no qualifications] you’re going to be a ‘messer-abouter’ really.

   • 2010, Nikesh Shukla, Coconut Unlimited, Quartet, →ISBN, page 70:

     She wanted to give me the illusion of freedom now I was a teenager, but still felt it her duty to monitor how much time was spent studying and how much time being a ‘ruckuryu’ — which, loosely translated, means a ‘messer-abouter’ — so instead of asking where I was off to, she’d ask, ‘Am I cooking for you tonight?’

   • 2014 May, “Education: Teaching the world to code is a noble goal, but how is it going to work in practice?”, in Linux Voice, page 46, column 2:

     To find out more we travelled west to Manchester, venue for the second annual Jamboree – a festival of educators, makers and messer-abouters focussed on highlighting how engaging the Pi can be.

   • 2017, David K. C. Cooper, Christiaan Barnard: The Surgeon Who Dared: The Man and the Story of Heart Transplantation, Fonthill, →ISBN, page 374:

     From Sussex in the UK came a ‘memo to the great heartless transplanter. Well done, Messer-abouter. Transplanting pays you, does it not? If not, by good results, it does pay you from the money viewpoint?’

   • 2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, Vintage, →ISBN:

     In the words of Milton Wainwright, a microbiologist and historian of science, Fleming was eccentric, a ‘messer-abouter’. ‘He had a reputation for being a nutter and doing daft things, like creating pictures of the Queen on a petri dish using different bacteria cultures.’