dallies

Definition of dalliesnext
present tense third-person singular of dally
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3
as in flirts
to show a sexual attraction for someone just for fun she spent the summer dallying with a guy renting the neighboring beach house

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for dallies
Verb
  • Stellan Skarsgård plays an aging filmmaker whose selfish past led to an estrangement from his daughters and who wants to make a movie inspired by their mom.
    Brian Truitt, USA Today, 8 Mar. 2026
  • Myers’ maternal half-brother is Quentin Grimes, who currently plays for the Philadelphia 76ers and spent part of the 2024-25 season with the Mavericks.
    Lia Assimakopoulos, Dallas Morning News, 8 Mar. 2026
Verb
  • That image lingers, but modern legal systems operate with far greater cross-border coordination than in decades past.
    Ascend Agency, Chicago Tribune, 12 Mar. 2026
  • Tulum has always been a place of ceremony, exchange, and reverence for nature, and that inheritance still lingers in the air.
    Gina Góngora, Condé Nast Traveler, 11 Mar. 2026
Verb
  • While waiting for flights to resume, Charli’s character Bethany flirts with the idea of blowing up her life by rekindling a romance with an old friend who owns a flower shop in Warsaw.
    Cheyenne Roundtree, Rolling Stone, 10 Feb. 2026
  • Delivered with an ease that flirts with comedy, it can be taken as humor punctuating drama.
    JP Mangalindan, Time, 27 Jan. 2026
Verb
  • Mary Lattimore’s harp spangles the background, while Camille Getz drags her violin across the track, a clever acoustic rendering of a classic shoegaze guitar squeal.
    Sadie Sartini Garner, Pitchfork, 11 Mar. 2026
  • There’s a level of helplessness that drags up, being surrounded by AI tools and AI updates and AI jobs, only to be faced with an idiot parent or friend or casual acquaintance using AI to justify their shitty actions towards you.
    CT Jones, Rolling Stone, 11 Mar. 2026
Verb
  • But while the new movie dawdles on its way to Toxie’s origins, then rushes toward a finale with a lurching rhythm that verges on calculated ineptitude, its spirit never feels inauthentic.
    Alison Willmore, Vulture, 29 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • Too much light in the evening — that extra hour from daylight saving time — delays that surge and the cycle gets out of sync.
    Lauran Neergaard, Chicago Tribune, 7 Mar. 2026
  • Too much light in the evening — that extra hour from daylight saving time — delays that surge and the cycle gets out of sync.
    ABC News, ABC News, 6 Mar. 2026
Verb
  • As your car idles, warm air blown from the top of your dashboard will melt the ice on the outside of the windshield.
    Meghan Overdeep, Southern Living, 27 Dec. 2025
  • Security camera footage shows a black vehicle park in front of Café Bernardo, a restaurant, and idles for about two minutes.
    Madisen Keavy, CBS News, 17 Dec. 2025
Verb
  • As the Bay Area slowly — some might say glacially — crawls into spring, there’s nothing better than sipping a hot cup of tea or coffee to warm yourself up.
    Kate Bradshaw, Mercury News, 25 Feb. 2026
  • As with aftermarket switchable sway bar systems, drivers can lock the sway bars in place for better handling and stability at speed and unlock them completely for maximum articulation during bumpy rock crawls.
    New Atlas, New Atlas, 9 Feb. 2026
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Dallies.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/dallies. Accessed 14 Mar. 2026.

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