drag one's heels

1. 1.

   postpone doing what one should be doing

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

   Synonymsprocrastinatestalldrag one's feetshillyshallydilly-dallydillydally

   Broaderdelay

   Narrowerprocrastinate

Questions about drag one's heels

What does drag one's heels mean?

drag one's heels means "postpone doing what one should be doing".

What is another word for drag one's heels?

Close synonyms include procrastinate, stall, drag one's feet, shillyshally, dilly-dally. 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 drag one's heels a common word?

drag one's heels is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.