Word.ws English Dictionary

shilly-shallies

shilly-shallies is the third-person singular simple present indicative of shilly-shally.

Meaning of shilly-shally

Verb

shilly-shally (third-person singular simple present shilly-shallies, present participle shilly-shallying, simple past and past participle shilly-shallied)

  1. (informal) To procrastinate.
    • "Why, you sees [sic], Captain, your time has come, and you can't shilly-shally any longer. You have had your full swing; your years are up, and you must die like a man!"1836, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, Paul Clifford in The works of Edward Lytton Bulwer, esq. in two volumes, Volume 1, Page 633
  2. (informal) To vacillate.
    • The shilly-shallying performance on domestic issues that has marked Bush's first two years in office is not the result of ineptitude.1991 January 7, Michael Duffy, “The Two George Bushes: At Home—A Case of Doing Nothing”, in Time

See all 4 meanings of shilly-shally

Questions about shilly-shallies

What is shilly-shallies the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Shilly-shallies is the third-person singular simple present indicative of shilly-shally.

Words near shilly-shallies in the dictionary

  1. Shilluks
  2. shilly and shally
  3. shilly-shallied
  4. shilly-shallier
  5. shilly-shalliers
  6. shilly-shallies
  7. shilly-shally
  8. shilly-shallying
  9. shilly-shallyings
  10. shillying and shallying
  11. shillyshallier

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shilly-shallies (page history and authors); shilly-shally (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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Cite this entry: “shilly-shallies.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shilly-shallies. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.