How to use dawdle in a sentence
10 example sentences · verb, noun
Dawdle means chiefly followed by away: to spend (time) without haste or purpose. Example: “If you dawdle on your daily walk, you won’t get as much exercise.”
Examples of dawdle by meaning
verbChiefly followed by away: to spend (time) without haste or purpose.
- to dawdle away the whole morning
verbTo move or walk lackadaisically.
- If you dawdle on your daily walk, you won’t get as much exercise.
- Blessed are the drivers who dawdleth not in the fast lane.2005, Charles Manley Brown, “Laws and Regulations”, in Thou Shalt Not Take Thyself too … Seriously: The Lighter Side of the Golden Years...
nounAn 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...
More sentences with dawdle
- There is not a great abundance of time, so please don't dawdle.From the entry abundance
- So you see, imagination needs ”moodling”— long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.1938, Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit. From the entry moodling
- He had said he would, but had dawdled skillfully and was still unfitly in bare feet and the shabby garments of a weekday.1921, Harry Leon Wilson, The Wrong Twin. From the entry unfitly
- But the kerosenelike fuel and the engines that burn it were dirty, noisy, dawdling and even deadly, linked to increased risk of cancer and respiratory disease.2008 May 18, Lawrence Ulrich, “Diesel Automobiles Clean Up for an Encore”, in New York Times. From the entry kerosenelike
- Dawdling over a cafe royale in our fur-lined slit trench, we can depend on advertising to keep the home folks up to date on combat conditions.1944 December 2, Al Hine, “G.I.’s Raise Their Eyebrows at Advertising”, in Editor & Publisher, volume 77, number 49, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry cafe royale
- Just as important is the pen's ability to dawdle in midstroke, fattening the curve of a y, for example, while pondering whether to follow up with a comma or not.2012 October 23, Edmund Morris, This Living Hand: And Other Essays, Random House Publishing Group, page 93. From the entry fatten the curve
Meaning of dawdle
- verb Chiefly followed by away: to spend (time) without haste or purpose.
- verb To spend time idly and unfruitfully; to waste time.
- verb To move or walk lackadaisically.
Questions about dawdle in a sentence
- How do you use dawdle in a sentence?
- Dawdle is used as a verb and noun. For example: “If you dawdle on your daily walk, you won’t get as much exercise.”
- What is a short sentence with dawdle?
- “to dawdle away the whole morning”
- What does dawdle mean?
- Dawdle means chiefly followed by away: to spend (time) without haste or purpose.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dawdle (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 dawdle in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/dawdle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.