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Dawdle   Listen
noun
Dawdle  n.  A dawdler.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dawdle" Quotes from Famous Books



... biscuits, and at eleven we retired supperless to bed, amidst a confusion of awful sounds, and were deprived of lights as well as food. When we asked for food or light, and made weak appeals on the ground of faintness, the one steward who seemed to dawdle about for the sole purpose of making himself disagreeable, always replied, "You can't get anything, the stewards are on duty." We were not accustomed to recognize that stewards had any other duty than that of feeding the passengers, but under the circumstances ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... I warn you against being engaged while you have a demand for brains. I should like to dawdle here before the fire until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... inserted between the environs of New York City and the rich towns up the coast. Years afterward he built a commodious summer home on the choicest point that his property afforded, named it Southlook, and transformed that particular part of his wilderness into a millionaire's paradise, where he could dawdle and putter to his heart's content, where he could spend his time and his money with a prodigality that came so late in life to him that he made waste of both in his haste to live down ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... you insist that your men shan't violate the early-closing ordinance, you must observe one yourself. A man who works only half a day Saturday can usually do a day and half's work Monday. I'd rather have my men hump themselves for nine hours than dawdle for ten. ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... long strides are not easy to keep pace with. They walk more slowly when out of sight. Oh, the delightful dawdle back through the vague shadows of evening in sweetly scented lanes! How merrily she prattles with charming ingenuousness, while he watches her expressive features, a new strange thrill at ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... store in the near future. The so-called unemployed are mostly utter loafers, who will not give a good day's work for a fair day's wage. They refuse to work for less than eight shillings a day, and many of them if offered work at that price only dawdle about for a few hours ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... some of the causes we have stated is the extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dawdle, stare, gape, and do anything but strive and wrestle with the task before them. The most ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman ploughing. A gigantic figure—a seven-foot machine for turning potatoes in human nature—wrapt up in an immense great-coat, and urging on two starved ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... William, Taillebois, Guader, Warrenne, short-spoken, hard-headed, hard-swearing warriors, could allow, complacently, a smooth churchman to dawdle on like this, counting his periods on his fingers, and seemingly never coming to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are sold in ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang

... interests required that we should be well represented, and powerfully supported, we had neither an Ambassador nor a fleet in the Mediterranean; and because Lord Ponsonby is Lord Grey's brother-in-law he has been able with impunity to dawdle on months after months at Naples for his pleasure, and leave affairs at Constantinople to be managed or mismanaged by a Charge d'Affaires who is ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... the last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays in bed till ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... don't thee let on as thee cares for her so much. I sometimes think she wearies o' thy looks and thy ways. Show up thy manly heart, and make as though thee had much else to think on, and no leisure for to dawdle after her, and she'll think a deal more on thee. And now mend thy pen for a fresh start. I give and bequeath—did thee put "give and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the tobacco-fields by a convenient coppice of pine and cedar, they had set to work in a fury of diligence, had cut and stacked the grass in a race with time, and now found themselves possessed of a precious hour in which to dawdle, and swap opinions and tobacco before the sunset horn should call ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... called an incorrigible dawdle, and made humble confession of the same, offering to do all in her power to make up for the morning's laziness. But what would Midas be without ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the humbler sort loves to dawdle along the bank on a bright afternoon, watching the play of the river and drawing a kind of philosophic contentment out of its cool aquatic humours. Presently he reaches that bridge—the jewellers' bridge. He thinks he must buy a ring. Be sure the stone will reflect his Arno in one of its moods. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to ask Edwina's husband something. The fat man ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... you dawdle, the life blood is being sucked out of our great nation. It is a man's job to fight; it is a woman's to save.... I think you've made your choice, though you don't realize it. I'm praying to God that I'll rise ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... before, at eight o'clock, her hour to go, had made her hang back and dawdle. She did last things or pretended to do them; to be in the cage had suddenly become her safety, and she was literally afraid of the alternate self who might be waiting outside. He might be waiting; it was he who was her alternate ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... I ought to," he answered, "for the reason that I can't find any one I like to go with me. My mother and sisters go away to some watering-place every summer and stay there, and father sticks to business. I either dawdle around where the folks are summers, or stay in town and hate myself, if I can't find some one to go off on my yacht with me. The fact is, Miss Page," he added mournfully, "I have hard work to kill time. I can get a little ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... Percy," called Joel across the table, "and don't dawdle so. We're going to make a double ripper, four yards long, to go down that hill there." He laid down his spoon to point out the window ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... find it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort. The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... well-known fact that in the world of to-day time is an essential factor in the race for success. No young man can afford to dawdle for four long years in acquiring a so-called "higher" education. Three-fourths of that time is, if anything, more than sufficient in which to attain all the graces and culture that ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... on Monday, and returned here yesterday; go away to- morrow. It has been a dreadfully idle life all day long, facendo niente, incessant gossip and dawdle, poor, unprofitable talk, and no rational employment. Brougham was here a little while ago for a week. He, Lord Wellesley, and Lord Anglesey form a discontented triumvirate, and are knit together by the common bond of a sense of ill-usage and of merit neglected. Wellesley and Anglesey ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... never more needed than now: I am near Ujiji, but the slaves who paddle are tired, and no wonder; they keep up a roaring song all through their work, night and day. I expect to get medicine, food, and milk at Ujiji, but dawdle and do nothing. I have a good appetite, and sleep well; these are the favourable symptoms; but am dreadfully thin, bowels irregular, and I have no medicine. Sputa increases; hope to hold out to Ujiji. Cough worse. Hope ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... rubbernecking this A.M.? I like you, Hobbs. You are the best interpreter of English I've ever seen. I can't help understanding you, no matter how hard I try not to. I want you to get me into the Castle grounds to-day and show me where the duchesses dawdle and the countesses cavort. I'm ashamed to say it, Hobbs, but since yesterday I've quite lost interest in the middle classes and the component parts thereof. I have suddenly acquired a thirst for champagne—in other words, I have a hankering for the nobility. Catch the idea? Good! Then you'll ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... unrecognised, and turbulence of emotion, whether of grief or gladness, is felt to be out of place in a dream-being, whose sole reality is its unreality. Their personal unimportance to the Universe, and remoteness from the Market-place of Life allow them to dawdle. Their experiences have no sharp edges, no abrupt precipices, no divisive gulfs, no defined beginnings and endings. The book of their sojourn in this world has neither chapters nor headings; the page runs on without hindrance from tragedy to comedy, comedy to farce, farce to melodrama, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... me will you be blamed; I like to see you not ashamed To dawdle for awhile; You furnish, by example sage, A moral for our busy age; And so, though others fume and rage, I watch you with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various

... matron's petted and pampered Persian cats, which lounged about her room and were the delight of the convalescents. They were two peculiarly lazy sultanas of cats—mere jewels of the harem—Oriental beauties that loved to bask in the sun or curl themselves up on the rug before the fire and dawdle away their lives in congenial idleness. Strange to say, Hilda's prophecy came true. Zuleika settled herself down comfortably in the Professor's easy chair and fell into a sound sleep from which there was no awaking; while Roxana met fate on the tiger-skin she loved, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... I, but we can remember it. I do like to see a girl work with a will, even at frying fish. Most of 'em dawdle so at the few things they try to do. There's a piece of energy for you!" and Captain John leaned forward from his rocky seat to watch Ruth, who just then caught up the coffee-pot about to boil over, and with the other hand saved ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... could whisk through her dressing in ten minutes, and that it was quite unnecessary to get up so soon: even when the others mercilessly pulled the bed-clothes from her, and pointed to their watches, she would dawdle instead of "whisking," and spend much superfluous time over manicure or dabbing on cucumber cream to improve her complexion. She was so innocent about her little vanities, and conducted them with such child-like complacency, that ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... real government; a government not to be whistled down the wind by any jack (or Jeff) who chooses to secede: a government that will not dawdle with hands in pockets while this continent is converted into a maggot-swarm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... the party has gained the top of the crest, and, after establishing a relay station in a pill-box lately occupied by their opponents, the remainder proceed on their way. Many are the temptations to dawdle, instead of getting on with the work, so much of interest is taking place around them, including the amusing, and at that time not too frequent, sight of scores of the enemy, with uplifted hands, emerging from pill boxes, where they must ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... home from school by four o'clock for at half-past three her room was dismissed and it never took her more than half an hour to say good-by to her numerous new friends and dawdle home. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... came jealousy of my love for my baby. I feared lest it should make me—nay, was making me—neglect my husband. The fear first arose in me one morning as I sat with her half dressed on my knees. I was dawdling over her in my fondness, as I used to dawdle over the dressing of my doll, when suddenly I became aware that never once since her arrival had I sat with my husband in his study. A pang of dismay shot through me. "Is this to be a wife?" I said to myself,—"to play with a live love like a dead doll, and forget ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... offenses, such as making a mess of their food or themselves, or talking with their mouths full, all children love to crumb bread, flop this way and that in their chairs, knock spoons and forks together, dawdle over their food, feed animals—if any are allowed in the room—or ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... sometimes a mother, and she is devotedly fond of her children, in their future. She may be seen gazing in their faces by the hour; but the picture that is before her mind's eye is the fulfilment of their present promise. An ordinary woman would dawdle away her time in admiring their soft eyes, and curly hair, and full warm cheeks; but the woman of the world sees the bud grown into the expanded flower, and the small cradle is metamorphosed into ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... she went away, and came back as swiftly with an invitation for him to step inside. There was something inexplainable about this maid who veiled her eagerness to admit him with such transparencies. Even a fool would scarcely have left so forbidding a character to dawdle about the living room while she ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... evil-doers wander—Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes. Whether the narrow streets of the native ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... flesh," he responded. "This was a grand chance for you. Ah, ha! The business riled your stomach a little, but nonsense! that will soon pass off. But we must not dawdle here; someone may come in. Let ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... the boy, more mindful of his own tea than his neighbour's ailments, slips on his jacket and goes home. The last customers dawdle out with a grunt intended for a salutation. Mrs. Mason is softly heard to snore. And all the while Annie Mason- -all the colour vanished from her wholesome face—stands with her hands clutching her dress, gazing down at the man, ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw her come up only a little while after I had finished my breakfast, a ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle. She was alone and Jasper Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her. I went to meet her (she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella and a book) and laid my hands on her chair, placing it near the stern of the ship, where she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... lay no shady, amiably crooked country roads and bosky dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle over Hazlitt, yet we knew how crisscross cattle-trails should take us skirting down the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... being mentioned, he said, 'I took to Dr. Gibbons.' And addressing himself to Mr. Charles Dilly, added, 'I shall be glad to see him. Tell him, if he'll call on me, and dawdle over a dish of tea in an afternoon, I shall take ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... thinking so intently about the matter that he began to dawdle. And if there was one thing that the Muley Cow didn't like it was to have to stand still while a slow milker puttered at his work. So she suddenly gave her tail a switch and brought the end of it ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey

... figures is an entirely different thing from the drudgery necessary to become a great artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication of either ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... difficult to be a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall. I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the geraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and order half-a-crown's worth ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... written anything good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... O.N. doeyfa, O. Ic. deyfa. Swaledale slaiching, "sneaking," is the same as O.N. slaeikja, "to lick"; a secondary meaning of O.N. slaeikja is "to sneak"; keeal, "kail," could come from O.N. kal or Gael. cal. It is probably from the latter. The word slaister, "to dawdle, to waste one's time," is not clear. The sb. slaisterer, "a slink, an untidy person," is also found. The ai indicates an original diphthong. It is probably the same as Norse sloeysa, sb. "an untidy person," as vb. "to be untidy, to be careless." Ster ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom

... passed up the pathway, with a stride and a swing so different from his ordinary listless dawdle. They heard the sound of his heavy tread on the boards of the cottage verandah. Then there was a silence, and the heavy wits of each of the waiting men strove to grasp sufficient of the spectacle to put his thoughts into ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... Faithful Ayah didn't dawdle over her food. She returned, sat down on the floor beside little Fay's cot and started her ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... ending. Burning eyes, devouring eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, and the streets ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... Messrs. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If I were now standing there, I don't think I could face it. But then I was with the girl; I had to save her. Fire was behind us, racing after us; water lay in front. Once there and we were safe. It was not a time to dawdle or hesitate, I ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... however, that this part of education is not for everybody. The real educational problem is to discover what boys Greek will be good for, and what boys will only waste time and dawdle over it. Certainly to men of a literary turn (a very minute percentage), Greek is of an inestimable value. Great poets, even, may be ignorant of it, as Shakespeare probably was, as Keats and Scott certainly were, as Alexandre Dumas was. But Dumas regretted ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... deal about Ellesborough since their meeting; yet not absorbingly, for she had her work to do. She was rather inclined to quarrel with him for having been so long in making his call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... did Mr. Wolfe do at Louisbourg? Ill as he was, and in love as we knew him to be, he didn't stop to be nursed by his mother, Harry, or to dawdle with his sweetheart. He went on the King's service, and hath come back covered with honour. If there is to be another great campaign in America, papa says he is sure of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... man looks at his watch—is afraid it must be seven. The elder supposes that some of the party don't want to be late for dinner. The young lady says:—"Well—I got it all out of a book." And her mother says:—"Now, please don't dawdle any more. Go the short way, and see for the carriage." Whereupon the young people make off at speed up the steps to the terrace, and a brown bear on the top of his pole thinks they are hurrying to give ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... smile . . . Strange I Should dawdle near her grace admiringly, When love alarmed and challenged sympathy, Announced in chills of creeping ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... I can't tell," he shouted in answer to both questions, half angrily, already on his way. "Don't dawdle," ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a disastrously undeveloped condition, just because it is in their hands. The low rate of female wages leaves them the monopoly of it, and they dawdle along in the ways of their grandmothers, out of sight behind the advancing ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss the Archbishop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... but if you want Frank, you'd better tell him not to dawdle over Annette's gate half an hour," began Jack, who could not resist teasing his dignified brother about one of the few foolish things he ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... the occasion of her presentation to the Sovereign was of the most elegant and brilliant description. Some ladies we may have seen—we who wear stars and cordons and attend the St. James's assemblies, or we, who, in muddy boots, dawdle up and down Pall Mall and peep into the coaches as they drive up with the great folks in their feathers—some ladies of fashion, I say, we may have seen, about two o'clock of the forenoon of a levee day, as the laced-jacketed band of the Life Guards are blowing triumphal ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Baby will go out for an airing with the Bearer and Ayah people, and while they dawdle along the dusty road, or sit on kerb-stones and on culvert parapets, he will listen to the extensile tale of their simple sorrows. He will hear, with a sigh, that the profits of petty larceny are declining; he will be taught to regret the increasing ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... done and admirably done. Future generations will profit by it. But the peasant who had had all his ideas and habits upheaved had had time to forget the oppression of the Turk, but remembered, with kindness, his slop-dawdle tolerance, This happens, I believe, in every land "freed" from the Turk. The people vaguely expect an earthly paradise where every one will do as he pleases, and find to their dismay that you can no longer evade the sheep-tax by tipping the hodja to let you put your ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... wide, with its mockery of open and honest sunlight, and yet his feet were to remain fettered in that underworld gloom he had grown to hate. He must still stay an unwilling prisoner in this garden of studied indolence, this playground of invalids and gamblers; he must still dawdle idly about these glittering, stagnating squares, fringing a crowd of meaningless foreigners, skulking half-fed and poorly housed about this opulent showplace of the world that set its appeasing theatricalities into motion only at the touch ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... Houw Hoek came out twenty-three years ago, he told me, without a 'heller', and is now the owner of cattle and land and horses to a large amount. But then the Germans work, while the Dutch dawdle and the English drink. 'New wine' is a penny a glass (half a pint), enough to blow your head off, and 'Cape smoke' (brandy, like vitriol) ninepence a bottle—that is the real calamity. If the Cape had ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... all going to do, some Thursday. We're going to the theater, and then dawdle over supper at some cheap place, you know, and then go down on the docks, at about three, to see the fishing fleet come in? Are you on? It's great. They pile the fish up to ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... first sign of eve is the signal for dispersion homewards, and it is only from the safe shelter of his own room that the winter patient ventures to gaze on the perilous glories of the sunset. The evenings are in fact a dawdle indoors as the day has been a dawdle out, a little music, a little reading of the quiet order, a little chat, a little letter-writing, and ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... quick boys have to learn how to waste their extra time, which seems to be a pity. But with a sensible master, it is a thing understood, that it is better for boys or girls to study hard while they study, and never to learn to dawdle. Taking it for granted that you are in the hands of such masters or mistresses, I will take it for granted that, when you have learned the school lesson, there will be no objection to your next learning the other lesson, which lazier boys ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale

... folks, listen; I'll tell you a tale, Though to shock and surprise you I fear it won't fail; Of Master John Dawdle my story must be, Who, I'm sorry to say, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... Both of them stone dead! How the Padre will laugh! A right and left! Oh, here's that little dawdle ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... the princess, opening upon him all the tenderness of her large and beaming eyes, "how weary am I of sitting on my cushion, and seeing fop after fop, fool after fool, dawdle down upon their faces before me; and, moreover, I am suffocated with perfumes. Strike your mandolin again louder, beloved of my soul—still louder, that I may be further relieved of ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... when she was losing self-control she was accustomed to seek her own room, and see how long she could keep up a shuttlecock without a failure. As to weather, again, I should say the worse the weather the better the exercise of a brisk walk; and my wise mother shall see that her girls do not dawdle about in-doors, but get a good tramp under all skies as a part of the habits of life. A sturdy struggle with a rough day blows the irritability and nervousness of the hour out of any but the truly sick, and I know as to some ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... is at my use and service. He is a very honest good creature. I wish that I had room for him here in this house instead of in Chesterfield Street. Bob grows every day more and more attached to him, but I cannot dawdle him as Horry Walpole does Tonton, for Me du Deffand's sake, nor does he seem to expect it. He has the accueil of a respectable old suisse in my hall, where I meet him on coming home in a posture couchante. Adieu; till I have letters, remember me kindly to all, but to the dear children ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... answering with vehemence: "I should say not, you romantic infant! When I work I want to work with workers, not with drones! A person who can only dawdle over his task is of no use at all. How Uncle Calvin gets on with a mere imitation of a secretary, I can't possibly see. Why, Ted himself could cover more ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... she started off briskly into the woodland road, striding along with the splendid swing of the healthy Englishwoman who has not been trained to dawdle. Her walking-skirt gave free play to her limbs; she was far past the well-known "line in the road" before she paused to take a full breath and to recapitulate. Her heart beat faster and the sudden glow in her cheek was not from the exercise. Somehow, out there alone ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... must do something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I'm not fit for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I'm not a man, and I can't drink. I'll dawdle over my dresses, and put ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... children than they are to ordinary children in ordinary schools in all parts of the country. But they overcame all internal obstacles, went through with all of the monotony and drudgery, and to that extent triumphed over any disposition to shirk or to loaf or to dawdle or to flit from ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... being you pass. Are you a botanist, or geologist?—you may pick up leaves and chip rocks wherever you please, the live-long day. Are you a valetudinarian?—you may physic yourself by Nature's own simple prescription, walking in fresh air. Are you dilatory and irresolute?—you may dawdle to your heart's content; you may change all your plans a dozen times in a dozen hours; you may tell "Boots" at the inn to call you at six o'clock, may fall asleep again (ecstatic sensation!) five minutes after he has knocked at the door, and ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... stay here and dawdle with your worthless companions if you desire," shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lesson may be a good one for you. I wash my hands of the whole matter. But understand. Don't write to me for a cent. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... said to her, 'Oh, sweet Beansie! tidy up my hearth a bit, for I am half choked by my ashes,' the unkind girl replied, 'The more fool you for having ashes! You don't suppose I am going to dawdle about helping people who won't help themselves? Not a ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... his head, hurrying to and fro like a stream of busy ants. The women, with clothes tucked up above the knee, plod and plash through the water. They go at a half run, a kind of fast trot, and hardly a word is spoken—garnering the rice crops is too important an operation to dawdle and gossip over. Each hurries off with his burden to the little family threshing-floor, dumps down his load, gives a weary grunt, straightens his back, gives a yawn, then off again to the field for another load. It is no use leaving a bundle on the field; where food is so ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... the luck to do that, in a way it'll make no real difference. I've written her name in my private calendar, and shall always remember it."—She paused a moment. "We got rather near each other somehow, I think. We didn't dawdle or beat about the bush, but went straight along, passed the initial stages of acquaintance in a few hours, and reached that point of friendship where ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... ever good to breathe. Grant Harlson was not particularly troubled by the condition of his finances. That the money available had lasted till his schooling ended, was, at least, a good thing, and, as for the future, was it not his business to attend to that presently? Meanwhile he would dawdle for a week ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... farewell! Listen, I will not live Less lovely, nor this cruel beauty lose, And I perforce grow kind: I'll not survive The deep delicious poison of a smile Nor mortal music of the sighing bosom That slowly overcomes the fainting brain. It shall not dawdle downward to the grave; I'll pass upon the instant of perfection. No woman shall behold Poppaea fade: And ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... in order to finish her dinner more quickly, shirks the use of her teeth, and sends food, half chewed, into her stomach, is like a man who, having two servants, the one strong and vigorous, the other feeble and delicate, allows the first to dawdle at his ease, and puts all the hard work on the other. He would be very unjust in so doing, would he not? And as injustice always meets with its reward, his work is ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... he was in some measure infected, and he dropped an insinuation, that he could eclipse his rival, even in his own lunatic sphere. This hint was not lost upon his companion, counsellor, and buffoon, the facetious Davy Dawdle, who had some humour, and a great deal of mischief, in his composition. He looked upon his patron as a fool, and his patron knew him to be both knave and fool; yet, the two characters suited each other so well, that they could hardly exist asunder. Davy was an artful sycophant, but ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... so long with him, and his art so short, that he shall dawdle by the way and wander from his path, reducing his giant intellect—garrulous upon matters to him unknown, that the scoffer may rejoice and the Philistine be appeased while he takes up the parable of the mob and proclaims himself their spokesman and fellow-sufferer? O Brother! ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... go through life reading the signs on the ten-story buildings and acquiring knowledge, than to dawdle and "Ah!" adown our pathway to the tomb and leave no record for posterity except that we had a good neck to pin a necktie upon. It is not pleasant to be called green, but I would rather be green and aspiring than blase and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... sit here and dawdle all day," exclaimed Deppingham. "We must be moving about—arrange our batteries, and all that, don't you know. Get out a skirmish line, nominate our spies, bolster up our defences, set a watch, court-martial ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... soon showed its dark side. Its possession, indeed, enabled Madame Valiere to loiter on the more lighted stairs, or dawdle in the hall with Madame la Proprietaire; but Madame Depine was not only debarred from these dignified domestic attitudes, but found a new awkwardness in bearing Madame Valiere company in their walks abroad. Instead ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... choice, Dreer would have avoided Amy on general principles, but in this case he had no chance, for, unless he climbed a fence and took to the fields, there was no way for him to reach school without proceeding along the present road. Neither was it advisable to dawdle, for he had Greek at ten o'clock, it was now twelve minutes of and "Uncle Sim" had scant patience with tardy students. There was nothing for it but to hurry along, but the fact didn't improve his temper, which was already bad. To walk three-quarters ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... convenient, at this stage, to make some remarks upon the vital topic of the first meal of the day. With the great bulk of our population sufficient heed is never given it, and yet it is of infinite consequence. By far the greater number of people dawdle in bed till the last possible moment, when all at once they jump into their bath—that is, if they take a bath—swallow a hasty breakfast, and make a frantic rush for their steamer, train, or tram, in order to begin their daily work. How very much better than all this ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... gentle breezes sighing down the gullies, dim and lone in the eerie moonlight, were laden with the scent of wattle and other native flowers, and otherwise fresh and sweet with the inexpressible purity of summer night on the great unbroken bush-land. In such dryad-like resorts we were tempted to dawdle so long that the big hours of the evening frequently found us still on the breast of the river. I was wont to recline on an impromptu couch of rugs in the bottom of the well-built craft identified with our excursions, where I could feign to be asleep. At first Dawn ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... Hilda's mind. And now, in Janet's bedroom, impressed as she was by the strangeness of the fact that the prime reason for hurrying at top-speed into bed had been abolished, she yet positively could not linger, the force of habit being too strong for her. And she was in bed, despite efforts to dawdle, while Janet was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... Governor of the district everything had been arranged for a drive of a couple hundred miles through some of the prettiest parts of the country from Kuopio to Iisalmi. We were to have a carriage with a hood (a rare honour) and two horses, to dawdle as we liked by the way, and just order our vehicle when and as we wanted it, so that we might really peep into the homes of the people, as well as avail ourselves of the Baron's many kind introductions. But late on the afternoon before that named ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... way in which Laurence had sought to dawdle away the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had dreamed the portentous events which had intervened. They could not ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... sake of getting a good look at the scholars. On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random rubbish solely to prolong the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that there has been a debate as to whether they should take a little rest down on Aarre Water. There are certainly many old ones who know the place again, and plenty of the young are tender-winged, and would fain sit on the water and dawdle ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... Lady Tyrrell. "Young gentlemen persuade young ladies to do the most imprudent things—saunter about in the cold after skating, and dawdle under trees, and then wonder when they catch cold.—Do they do such things in your country, Mrs. Tallboys, and expect the mammas and elder sisters to ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hunter did not dawdle over his supper. In a quarter of an hour he had finished it, and was building up the fire again. Then he stretched himself beside the trio in the rude bunk, drawing one thin blanket over him. Neal, who lay ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... and bathe, George. Why do you dawdle talking? Bring them back to tea. Bring back some milk, cakes, honey. The change will do you good. George has been working very hard at his office. I ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... young person gaily, "as the reward of virtue, let's go up on the roof. It is after four, but we'll have time if we don't dawdle. We can get from here to ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... this. It is "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even then. It is not improbable ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... will let you go on Friday, but we shall have to dawdle about the lakes for some time. We can't rush through them as we have been rushing through all these grand old Italian towns. We must have a long rest there, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were certainly no more than their sedulous ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... of times long passed, but certainly we found nothing of the kind; nothing indeed different from all the folk of the South who dawdle at their work and spend most of their leisure energetically ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... What I have to pray for is dry weather, that the ladies may spend their days on deck, for just as much time as they spend below I shall consider that I am wasting. Indeed, I regret the attractiveness of the cabins, for I fear there may be a temptation to dawdle there, or lie among cushions on the comfortable seat-bunks on a gray or chilly day. "I hope she's as much interested in scenery as she apparently is in history," I said to myself as Starr and I wandered over the boat, "for the skipper-job can be combined with the business of lecturer and cicerone, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... matter in the least. Do come on, Hilda. We shan't have time if you dawdle on here. In any case Pussy will have to ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... suggestion needs explaining, perhaps. It does not mean license to dawdle. Nothing is much more annoying in a speaker than too great deliberateness, or than hesitation of speech. But it means a quiet realization of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, there is time enough for every point and shade of ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied that, spending many ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... in his somewhat eccentric gait, compounded of a hop, and a skip, and a dawdle. He had made about half a mile when the path curved to the mountain's brink. He paused and parted the glossy leaves of the dense laurel that he might look out over the precipice at the distant heights. ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... When I ask you a question, or give an order, take it deliberately, and dawdle off ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... was over, she was to see the world under Lady Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ready to put ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... not have to wait long for Ali Baba, Mujrim, and the camels, for they had not been fools enough to dawdle, with a hundred and fifty balked freebooters within rifle-shot, whose resilient pride was likely to breed anger. You can't lead camels any more than horses as fast as you can ride them; unless stampeded they tow loggily; but the fact that two or three ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... difference of years; quite as likely to last his time. But between them there was the difference of the nervous temperament and the lymphatic. Travers, with less brain than Sir Peter, had kept his brain constantly active; Sir Peter had allowed his brain to dawdle over old books and lazily delight in letting the hours slip by. Therefore Travers still looked young, alert,—up to his day, up to anything; while Sir Peter, entering that drawing-room, seemed a sort of Rip van Winkle who had slept through the past ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hair-splitting little idiot that I used to be! Instead of getting at her husband's point of view and enjoying with him, at least sometimes, she insists on acting the martyr because he will not dawdle around and gush ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne

... should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... unmistakable malice, to John E. Hall. "Hall had the misfortune, some years ago, to fall acquainted with Mr. Thomas Moore, the poet, while Mr. Moore was 'trampoosing' over America. It spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... cannot be to them a good missionary; for a few of the best missionaries I know, speak the vernacular wretchedly. But I do emphasize the fact that proficiency here is of prime importance and I would also add that it should be the first work of a missionary after entering his field. To dawdle with the language the first year, is, generally speaking, to fail ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... luncheon they were content to dawdle in the picturesque streets, and Cynthia was reluctant to leave the fine old castle, in which Milton's "Masque of Comus" was first played on Michaelmas night of 1634. At first, she yielded only to the flood of memories pent in every American brain when the citizen ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... of those thoroughly well-chosen dinners of few courses and faultless service suitable for card-players, who neither care to stuff themselves as a preliminary to a battle royal, nor to dawdle through courses, eliminating for themselves what is not good for them. The men drank a light, sound, aromatic Irish of the major's; the women—except Marion, who took what the men took—used claret sparingly. Coffee was served where they sat; the men smoking, Agatha ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... nearly all the time. We have had a sharp, dreary winter too, and it has pinch'd me. I am alone most of the time; every week, indeed almost every day, write some—reminiscences, essays, sketches, for the magazines; and read, or rather I should say dawdle over books and papers a good deal—spend ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... helplessness and fear of work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment which so many energetic women of decided character have made—that of marrying a man who can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in the hope that they may be able to infuse in him some of their own moral ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... had read little and the only subject of which, barring sport and society, they had any real knowledge, was politics, and this they vowed too fatiguing for the tropics. They preferred the language of compliment, they loved to dawdle, to hold a skein of worsted, to read a novel aloud, or "The Yellowplush Papers" or selections from "Boz"; when tired of female society, or when it was too hot to hunt or fish, they retired to the gaming tables. Anne had never dreamed that ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... your teachers, is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... gigantic bubble schemes,— Whoever can invent 'em!— How splendid the prospectus seems, With int'rest cent. per centum His shares the holder, startled, sees At eighty below par: I dawdle to my club at ease, And ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... noise, the quarrels, the mooning ways, the healthy pessimism which was the motive power of the Euler family, as it is that of all respectable persons, and made their life a foretaste of purgatory. That a woman who did nothing but dawdle about all the blessed day should take upon herself to defy them with her calm insolence, while they bore their suffering in silence like galley-slaves,—and that people should approve of her into the bargain—that ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... dawdle!" he says, fretfully. "Do you forget there are other people in the world besides yourself? ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... stood ready to let go of the ball he seemed inclined to dawdle over it. It wasn't going to be one of his snappiest—-any onlooker could judge that, at least, ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... will do you good to earn your supper before you eat it, for once in a way, as I do. Come: don't dawdle. You should have been off on your rounds half an ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... the doctor, "I will send a steward to help you to dress—you will need a little assistance, with the ship cutting these wild capers—and if you do not dawdle too long over your toilet you will be just in good time for dinner. There goes the first bell," he added, as the strident clamour suddenly pealed out from ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... deep in thought when the train, which had been taking itself less seriously for the last half hour, stopping at stations of quite minor importance and generally showing a tendency to dawdle, halted again. A board with the legend "Corven" in large letters showed that ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... an unusual thing for me to do. Generally, I dawdled over my breakfast and I seldom took the trouble to ring the bell for the table to be cleared away; but on that morning, for some reason hidden in the general mysteriousness of the event, I did not dawdle. And yet I was not in a hurry. I pulled the cord casually, and while the faint tinkling somewhere down in the basement went on, I charged my pipe in the usual way and I looked for the match-box with glances distraught indeed, but exhibiting, I am ready to swear, no signs of a fine frenzy. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... spared this shameful exposure, which, he knew well enough, Davis would never forget, but would tell all his life with an ever-increasing garniture of fiction. He cursed his weakness in allowing himself to dawdle about those arsenals and that parade-ground, and to be so far misguided by a hardened bachelor as to admire certain yellow-haired German and black-haired Hungarian women on the promenade; when he came to think of going out in that sledge, it ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... with your work, Patsy, go on, and don't dawdle. Don't I tell you Mr. Durham is both tired and hungry? Never mind looking ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... straightened up and walked! Mr. Durant talked to us some about our lessons. He seemed pleased when we told him we liked geometry. When we got back to the college we told the girls about meeting Mr. Durant. I guess nobody will want to dawdle along after this; I'm sure ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... Dissenting minister, being mentioned, he said, 'I took to Dr. Gibbons.' And addressing himself to Mr. Charles Dilly, added, 'I shall be glad to see him. Tell him, if he'll call on me, and dawdle[407] over a dish of tea in an afternoon, I shall take ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... of concentrated practice with the mind fresh and the body rested is better than four hours of dissipated practice with the mind stale and the body tired. With a fatigued intellect the fingers simply dawdle over the keys and nothing is accomplished. I find in my own daily practice that it is best for me to practice two hours in the morning and then two hours later in the day. When I am finished with two hours of hard study I am exhausted ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... ineffable satisfaction was too much for General Feraud's stoicism. "Don't dawdle, then, damn you for a cold-blooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared out, suddenly, out of an impassive face held erect on a rigidly ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... ever and always following fast upon your heels. There is no time to dawdle or linger on the road, no "stop and go on again:" if you but step aside to fasten your shoe-tie, your place is occupied—you are edged off, pushed out of the main current, and condemned to circle slowly in the lazy eddy of some complimenting clique. Thousands are to be found, anxious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... me up, Captain Kenealy! Oh, do pray make haste! don't dawdle so!" Off cantered Lucy, and fanned her pony along without mercy. At the door of the house she jumped off without assistance, and ran to Mr. Bazalgette's study, and knocked hastily, and that gentleman was not a little surprised when this unusual ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... referred especially to Hyde's life, and were not altogether approved by him. His pretence of reading law had to be abandoned, for he had promised to remain at home with his mother, and it would not therefore be possible for him to dawdle about Pearl Street and Maiden Lane watching for Cornelia. But he had that happy and fortunate temper that trusts to events; and also, he soon began to realize that if circumstances alter ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... blew. Almost immediately, the sound of footsteps broke the silence and the lavatory was filled with hurrying men. Their stay in the room was short, however, as Joe had known it would be. Men leaving for home do not dawdle on ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner

... last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays in bed ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gorge by such goat or mule paths as were available on the margin of the river or on the ledges of the cliffs. Thus I should not be obliged to treat every fresh view as if it were a bird on the wing, but could dawdle as long as I pleased over this or that object without ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... oil in those lamps; don't make blunders. Arrange the remains of the dessert so as to make a show on the sideboard; ask my sister to come and help us. I'm sure I don't know what she's thinking about, that dawdle! Heavens, how slow she is! Here, take away these chairs, they'll want all the room ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Dawdle" :   dawdler, dally, get behind, dawdling, lag, follow, behave, fall behind, fall back, rush, trail



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