Past tense of dally
regular verb
The past tense of dally is dallied. The past participle is also dallied.
Forms of dally
| Base form (V1) | dally /ˈdæli/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | dallied |
| Past participle (V3) | dallied |
| Present participle | dallying |
| Third person singular | dallies |
Dallied in a sentence
- The end of the top rope he dallied around the gooseneck trailer hitch.2003, Jameson Parker, An Accidental Cowboy, page 89
- Could you be saving yourself for Mrs Right before you've dallied with a few Ms Wrongs?2010 March 13, Mariella Frostrup, “Dear Mariella”, in The Observer, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the…. From the entry Ms Wrong
- Lovers dallied upon divans spread with sables.1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no.…. From the entry sable
- Twenty years he dallied there between conjugal love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II…. From the entry scortatory
- He never dallied with the image, beloved of the Renaissance, of the lean and shrunk-shanked scholar, possessed of infinite Sitzfleisch and inured to pain.2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Penguin, published 2004, page 203. From the entry Sitzfleisch
Meaning of dally
- verb To waste time in trivial activities, or in idleness; to trifle.
- verb To caress, especially of a sexual nature; to fondle or pet.
- verb To delay unnecessarily; to while away.
Questions about the past tense of dally
- What is the past tense of dally?
- The past tense of dally is dallied.
- What is the past participle of dally?
- The past participle of dally is dallied.
- Is dally a regular or irregular verb?
- Dally is a regular verb: its past tense changes -y to -ied.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dally (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of dally.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/dally. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.