Word.ws English Dictionary

dackle

/ˈdækəl/

dackle verb: to slacken pace; to hesitate.

Verb

dackle (third-person singular simple present dackles, present participle dackling, simple past and past participle dackled)

  1. (Scotland) To slacken pace; to hesitate.
    • Sometimes we ran, sometimes we gaed; Whiles dackled on the way.1869, William Knight, Auld yule, and other poems (ed. by W. Lindsay), page 225
    • The two kits said 'hi' in the passing and never dackled, just kept going their own way.1988, British Homing World, page 53

Forms of dackle

third-person singular presentdackles
present participledackling
past participledackled
pastdackled

Origin of dackle

Compare dacker (“walk slowly”), and perhaps compare German dackeln (“to walk slowly”).

Questions about dackle

What does dackle mean?
Dackle means to slacken pace; to hesitate.
What part of speech is dackle?
Dackle is a verb.
How do you pronounce dackle?
Dackle is pronounced /ˈdækəl/.
What is the past tense of dackle?
The past tense of dackle is dackled.

Words near dackle in the dictionary

  1. dacites
  2. dacitic
  3. dack
  4. dacked
  5. dacking
  6. dackle
  7. dackled
  8. dackles
  9. dackling
  10. dacks
  11. DACL

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dackle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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