dawdle

verb

1. (transitive)Chiefly followed by away: to spend (time) without haste or purpose.

   “to dawdle away the whole morning”

   “[M]anaging to live on terms with both / Opposing potentates, the Power and you, / Crowned with success, but dawdle out my days / In exile here at Clairvaux, with mock love, […]”

2. (intransitive)To spend time idly and unfruitfully; to waste time.

   “Tell him, if he'll call on me, and davvdle over a diſh of tea in an afternoon, I ſhall take it kind.”

   “Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his successful love; for Mrs. Bennett, having dawdled about in the vestibule to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw Elizabeth open the door and with quick step pass he towards the staircase, than she entered the breakfast-room, and congratulated both him and herself in warm terms on the happy prospect of their nearer connection.”

   “You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of conscience about that, I suppose?”

   “There are no idlers here; the only loungers are those who have undertaken for hire to do other people's business, and the hireling dawdleth because he is an hireling. What is his master's business to him? he neither knows its importance nor yet cares he if it be neglected.”

   “White creature wholly white, thou winter-coloured imp, tongue-shaped and slippery, 'wall-streak' and 'rubbish of the floor,' that livest 'neath timbers of a house, that dawdlest underneath the nook, […]”

3. (intransitive)To move or walk lackadaisically.

   “If you dawdle on your daily walk, you won’t get as much exercise.”

   “[W]e, who, in muddy boots, dawdle up and down Pall Mall, and peep into the coaches as they drive up with the great folks in their feathers— […]”

   “[…] I began to wonder if this Arthur were really the same lad she used to pet and think so much of when he came down to Leatherhead and dawdled with my Lady and Bell along the Surrey lanes of an evening.”

   “Blessed are the drivers who dawdleth not in the fast lane.”

noun

1. An act of spending time idly and unfruitfully; a dawdling.
2. An act of moving or walking lackadaisically, a dawdling; a leisurely or slow walk or other journey.

   “For many the journey home from school was not a walk but a ‘dawdle’: it was an everyday experience that added meaning to their lives.”

3. Synonym of dawdler (“a person who dawdles or idles”).

   “Lord, I have ſuch a deal to do, I ſhall ſcarce have time to ſlip on my Italian luteſting.—VVhere is this davvdle of a houſekeeper?”

4. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of doddle (“a job, task, or other activity that is easy to complete or simple”).

   “He was a QC from Edinburgh, wearing the black jacket and pinstripe trousers of his trade, as if straight from court, and probably persuaded to come in the belief that if you could interest the Budhill and Springboig party in the repressive Gaullist policies in Algeria then becoming Solicitor-General was a dawdle.”