dilly-dally

Questions about dilly-dally

What does dilly-dally mean?

dilly-dally means "postpone doing what one should be doing".

How many syllables are in dilly-dally?

dilly-dally has 4 syllables and divides as dil-ly--dal-ly under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for dilly-dally?

Close synonyms include procrastinate, stall, drag one's feet, drag one's heels, shillyshally. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dilly-dally a common word?

dilly-dally is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.