Verb

(dawdl)

To spend time idly and unfruitfully, to waste time.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=October 29 , author=Neil Johnston , title=Norwich 3 - 3 Blackburn , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=However all Hennessey's good work went to waste on 52 minutes when he dawdled on the ball.}}

* Johnson

Come some evening and dawdle over a dish of tea with me.

To spend (time) without haste or purpose.

to dawdle away the whole morning

To move or walk lackadaisically.

If you dawdle on your daily walk, you won't get as much exercise.

* Thackeray

We dawdle up and down Pall Mall.

Verb

(en verb)

To delay movement or action until the arrival or occurrence of; to await. (Now generally superseded by "wait for".)

* Dryden

Awed with these words, in camps they still abide, / And wait with longing looks their promised guide.

* 1992 , (Hilary Mantel), A Place of Greater Safety , Harper Perennial 2007, p. 30:

The Court had assembled, to wait events, in the huge antechamber known as the Œil de Boeuf.

To delay movement or action until some event or time; to remain neglected or in readiness.

* (John Milton)

They also serve who only stand and wait .

* (John Dryden)

Haste, my dear father; 'tis no time to wait .

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait .}}

(US) To wait tables; to serve customers in a restaurant or other eating establishment.

(obsolete) To attend on; to accompany; especially, to attend with ceremony or respect.

* Dryden

He chose a thousand horse, the flower of all / His warlike troops, to wait the funeral.

* Rowe

Remorse and heaviness of heart shall wait thee, / And everlasting anguish be thy portion.

(obsolete) To attend as a consequence; to follow upon; to accompany.

(obsolete) To defer or postpone (a meal).

to wait dinner