To occupy oneself idly or without clear purpose, to tinker with an unimportant part of a project, to dally, sometimes as a form of procrastination
He can’t figure out how to finish the paper he’s writing, so he’s resorted to frittering with the fonts.
Fritters are round pieces of fruit, vegetables, or meat that are dipped in batter and fried. apple fritters. fritter away to waste time, money, or effort on something small or unimportant fritter something⇔away on. a thin piece of fruit, vegetable, or meat covered with a mixture of eggs and flour and cooked in hot fat apple/corn/banana etc fritter