Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use dally in a sentence

10 example sentences · verb, noun

Dally means to waste time in trivial activities, or in idleness; to trifle. Example: “The end of the top rope he dallied around the gooseneck trailer hitch.”

Examples of dally by meaning

verbTo wind the lasso rope (ie throw-rope) around the saddle horn (the saddle horn is attached to the pommel of a western...

  • The end of the top rope he dallied around the gooseneck trailer hitch.2003, Jameson Parker, An Accidental Cowboy, page 89

More sentences with dally

  • 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
  • He asked of course after Taimsa, who was still dallying in shamelessnesses at Antioch.2006, Judith Weingarten, The Chronicle of Zenobia, →ISBN, page 104. From the entry shamelessness
  • The big-bootied diva was seen dallying with the boy-band singer earlier this year.2003 January 14, Weekly World News, volume 24, number 18, page 48. From the entry bootied
  • Everything goes well until Helen dallies with one of her graduate students.1982 August 14, Michael Bronski, “If You Hated The Book You'll Loathe The Movie”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 5, page 10. From the entry homelife
  • 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 passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC. From the entry mercer
  • 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
  • He sat astride the bay horse, but now with a catchrope dallied to his saddle horn and a sleek buckskin filly side-wheeling in the cross-trail behind him.2012, C. Joseph Greaves, Hard Twisted, page 158. From the entry catchrope

Meaning of dally

  1. verb To waste time in trivial activities, or in idleness; to trifle.
  2. verb To caress, especially of a sexual nature; to fondle or pet.
  3. verb To delay unnecessarily; to while away.

Full definition of dally

Questions about dally in a sentence

How do you use dally in a sentence?
Dally is used as a verb and noun. For example: “The end of the top rope he dallied around the gooseneck trailer hitch.”
What is a short sentence with dally?
“Lovers dallied upon divans spread with sables.”
What does dally mean?
Dally means to waste time in trivial activities, or in idleness; to trifle.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dally (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use dally in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/dally. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.