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say it: AHY-duhl
idle is an adjective, verb and noun meaning "not in action or at work". It carries 10 recorded senses.
“the allegations proved groundless”
“idle fears”
“unfounded suspicions”
“unwarranted jealousy”
lacking a sense of restraint or responsibility
“idle talk”
“a loose tongue”
not having a job
“idle carpenters”
“jobless transients”
“many people in the area were out of work”
the state of an engine or other mechanism that is idling
“the car engine was running at idle”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for idle come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.