DAWDLING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does dawdling mean? 

• DAWDLING (noun)
  The noun DAWDLING has 1 sense:

1. the deliberate act of delaying and playing instead of working

  Familiarity information: DAWDLING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DAWDLING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The deliberate act of delaying and playing instead of working

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

dalliance; dawdling; trifling

Hypernyms ("dawdling" is a kind of...):

delay; holdup (the act of delaying; inactivity resulting in something being put off until a later time)

Derivation:

dawdle (waste time)

 Context examples 

Come, Fanny, taking her hand, “do not be dawdling any longer, or the dance will be over.”

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I'm tired of dawdling, and mean to work like a man.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The other was dawdling with the bottle, and Martin refused to wait for him, tossing the glass off in a gulp and refilling it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

And now, Watson, this is too serious for dawdling, especially as the old man is aware that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs; so if you are ready, we shall call a cab and drive to Waterloo.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The Musgroves could hardly be more ready to invite than he to come, particularly in the morning, when he had no companion at home, for the Admiral and Mrs Croft were generally out of doors together, interesting themselves in their new possessions, their grass, and their sheep, and dawdling about in a way not endurable to a third person, or driving out in a gig, lately added to their establishment.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Much could not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;—Mr. Perry walking hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office-door, Mr. Cole's carriage-horses returning from exercise, or a stray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough; quite enough still to stand at the door.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

She returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the gardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Charlotte,—and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the disappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

A personality disorder characterized by an indirect resistance to demands for adequate social and occupational performance; anger and opposition to authority and the expectations of others that is expressed covertly by obstructionism, procrastination, stubbornness, dawdling, forgetfulness, and intentional inefficiency.

(Passive-Aggressive Personality, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Between ourselves, Edmund, nodding significantly at his mother, it was cutting the roses, and dawdling about in the flower-garden, that did the mischief.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

They naturally took comfort in each other's society and were much together, riding, walking, dancing, or dawdling, for at Nice no one can be very industrious during the gay season.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)