Word.ws English Dictionary

dawdles

dawdles is the plural of dawdle.

dawdles is the third-person singular simple present indicative of dawdle.

Meaning of dawdle

Noun

dawdle (plural dawdles)

  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.2017, Colin G. Pooley, Jean Turnbull, Mags Adams, “Travelling to School”, in A Mobile Century?: Changes in Everyday Mobility in Britain in the Twentieth Century, Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, →ISBN
  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?1766, George Colman, David Garrick, The Clandestine Marriage, a Comedy. […], London: […] T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, […]; R[oberts] Baldwin, […]; R. Davis, […]; and T[homas] Davies, […], →OCLC, Act...
    Synonyms:
    dawdler

See all 6 meanings of dawdle

Questions about dawdles

What is dawdles the plural of?
Dawdles is the plural of dawdle.

Words near dawdles in the dictionary

  1. dawding
  2. dawdle
  3. dawdled
  4. dawdler
  5. dawdlers
  6. dawdles
  7. dawdlesome
  8. dawdlest
  9. dawdleth
  10. dawdling
  11. dawdlingly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dawdles (page history and authors); dawdle (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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