- Today's Word
Dillydally
[DIL-ee-dal-ee]
Definition
- (verb) To waste time through aimless wandering or indecision, to procrastinate, or to delay taking action. It often implies a lack of urgency or purpose, typically when someone should be doing something more productive.
Example
The project manager grew increasingly frustrated as her team continued to dillydally instead of meeting their deadlines, causing delays in the overall project timeline.
Fun Fact
The term “dillydally” is believed to have originated in the 16th century as a reduplication of the word “dally,” which means to waste time or loiter. Reduplication (repeating a word or part of a word) is a common way to create emphasis in many languages, and in this case, it reinforces the idea of prolonged or repeated delay.
(verb) To criticize someone or something severely and publicly, often with harsh or scathing language.
The columnist excoriated the company’s leadership for ignoring repeated safety warnings.
Excoriate comes from the Latin excoriare, meaning “to strip off the skin,” from ex- (“off”) and corium (“hide” or “skin”). While the word originally described physical abrasion, its meaning shifted metaphorically over time to describe verbal attacks so harsh they feel skin-deep, leaving nothing protected.