dilly-dally

1. 1.

   postpone doing what one should be doing

   “He did not want to write the letter and procrastinated for days”

   Synonymsprocrastinatestalldrag one's feetdrag one's heelsshillyshallydillydally

   Broaderdelay

   Narrowerprocrastinate

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: dil-ly--dal-ly. The stress falls on "ly-".

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.