dawdle
to waste time; idle; trifle; loiter: Stop dawdling and help me with these packages!
to move slowly, languidly, or dilatorily; saunter.
to waste (time) by or as if by trifling (usually followed by away): He dawdled away the whole morning.
Origin of dawdle
1synonym study For dawdle
Other words for dawdle
Other words from dawdle
- dawdler, noun
- daw·dling·ly, adverb
Words Nearby dawdle
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use dawdle in a sentence
In thus dawdling away their time they show a strange inconsistency – at one and the same time loving indolence and hating peace.
Goths: Germanic Warriors Who Exposed The Roman Empire | Dattatreya Mandal | September 4, 2022 | Realm of HistoryOn Saturday, we continued to dawdle, weather-wise, through October.
Saturday seemed to suggest autumn, but a warmer one than average | Martin Weil | October 24, 2021 | Washington PostWeyman’s cloak-and-rapier swashbuckler is long — over 400 pages in my edition — but its action never dawdles.
Flashing blades, secret passages, mistaken identities: ‘A Gentleman of France’ is a classic adventure tale | Michael Dirda | September 1, 2021 | Washington PostMany Republicans, meanwhile, seem perfectly open to dawdling on the legislation despite the critical support it would provide to many people currently in need.
Senate Republicans are trying to drag out the stimulus process in the middle of a national emergency | Li Zhou | March 5, 2021 | VoxI wandered on down the corridor to the elevator, to dawdle and not run into coarrivals.
Why should they not dawdle at their labor sitting upon the fence in endless colloquy while the harvest rots upon the stalk?
The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice | Stephen LeacockAfter a big fit of work, I can dawdle against any one; then I get another fit of work—it's like appetite.
Villa Rubein and Other Stories | John GalsworthyYou've no idea how beastly it is to dawdle about in a crowd of people, and then at the end go back to another term of school.
Sinister Street, vol. 1 | Compton MackenzieTell your mother, and that poor dawdle there, your sister, that they 'd be thankful they'd have followed my advice.
Roland Cashel | Charles James LeverThey watched him as he passed up the pathway, with a stride and a swing so different from his ordinary listless dawdle.
Colonial Born | G. Firth Scott
British Dictionary definitions for dawdle
/ (ˈdɔːdəl) /
(intr) to be slow or lag behind
(when tr, often foll by away) to waste (time); trifle
Origin of dawdle
1Derived forms of dawdle
- dawdler, noun
- dawdlingly, adverb
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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