dally
/ˈdali
/verb (dallies, dallying, dallied) [no object]
1Act or move slowly: she’d dallied upstairs long enough to put on a little make-up...
- Sligo players, anxious not to dally, sought to move the ball on with the minimum of fuss.
- From the corner, the Colombian international seized on the ball unmarked at the far post but dallied enough to allow Edmondson a smart block.
- It's a very small-scale event, so please don't dither, dally or delay.
Synonyms
dawdle, delay, loiter, linger, waste time, kill time, take one's time, while away time;
lag, trail, straggle, fall behind;
amble, plod, trudge, meander, drift;
Scottish & Irish traik
informal dilly-dally
archaic or literary tarry
2 (dally with) Have a casual romantic or sexual liaison with: he should stop dallying with film stars...
- My friend, both your wife and your housekeeper know that you no longer dally with her, and her loitering in your home is merely charity on your part.
- By dallying with her at Alexandria, he risked losing what he had just won at Pharsalus.
- As to his dallying with a 21-year-old, she noted, ‘Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.’
Synonyms
trifle, toy, play, amuse oneself, flirt, play fast and loose, tinker, philander, womanize, carry on
informal play around, mess about/around
2.1Show a casual interest in: the company was dallying with the idea of opening a new office...
- Similarly, I have gotten email from people ‘warning’ me that I am dallying with heterodoxy because I don't see a big problem with Harry Potter books and I kinda liked the Matrix.
- Some regarded him as dallying with nationalism.
- You come to win, not to dally with numbers and root for the home team.
Derivatives
dallier
Origin
Middle English: from Old French dalier 'to chat', of unknown origin.
shilly-shally from mid 18th century:
People unable to make up their minds whether to do something are likely to ask themselves ‘Shall I?’ repeatedly. With the rhyming impulse also seen in dilly-dally (early 17th century) (dally came from the French for ‘to chat’ in the Middle Ages) and willy-nilly, people in the 18th century mocked this tendency by expanding it to ‘shill I, shall I?’, and so shilly-shally was born.
Rhymes
- arched
- archegonium
- impregnability
- impregnable
- impregnably
- impregnate
- impregnation
- impresario
- imprescriptible
- impress
- impressible
- impression
- impressionability
- impressionable
- impressionableness
- impressionably
- impressional
- impressionism
- impressionist
- impressionistic
- impressionistically
- impressive
- impressively
- impressiveness
- impressment