{"id":1033,"date":"2019-11-07T11:23:44","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T16:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2019-11-07T11:30:51","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T16:30:51","slug":"word-of-the-week-dilly-dally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/11\/07\/word-of-the-week-dilly-dally\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Dilly-Dally"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/11\/dilly-dally.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1034\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2019\/11\/dilly-dally.jpg\" alt=\"Dilly Dally image\" width=\"482\" height=\"624\" \/><\/a>Here, thanks to Professor Bill Ross of Mathematics, we have a noun and verb (no variation in forms, there) apt for this time of the semester. Whatever you students (and faculty) do, now is not the time to dilly-dally.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/oed.com\/view\/Entry\/52816?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED<\/a> hyphenates our term, and the entry notes how similar terms, like zig-zag or shilly-shally, all express &#8220;a see-saw action.&#8221; In our case, the vacillation is between acting or not acting. The word is old, with recorded uses going back to the novel\u00a0<em>Pamela\u00a0<\/em>in 1740. No etymology appears at the OED. Certainly other terms for this back-and-forth exist. Send them my way.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s nuance in dilly-dally. This type of indecision does not necessarily stop us in our tracks, nor is it quite equal to being a slow-poke; a minor Tolkien character calls his helper a &#8220;slowcoach&#8221; in\u00a0<em>The Fellowship of the Ring<\/em>. More is at stake than taking one&#8217;s time. I suppose a dilly-dallier could be purposeful, in order to come to a decision, or simply plodding. Others seem to make that call. The person dilly-dallying may not even know it.<\/p>\n<p>I would say more to you dilly-dallies (a rather rare nominal plural) but we need to get busy! To work!<\/p>\n<p>Please send us words and metaphors useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>image courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.needpix.com\/photo\/download\/450633\/yes-no-maybe-yellow-indecisive-balloon-speech-thought-bubble\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Needpix<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here, thanks to Professor Bill Ross of Mathematics, we have a noun and verb (no variation in forms, there) apt for this time of the semester. Whatever you students (and faculty) do, now is not the time to dilly-dally. The OED hyphenates our term, and the entry notes how similar terms, like zig-zag or shilly-shally, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2019\/11\/07\/word-of-the-week-dilly-dally\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Dilly-Dally<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87405],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-gF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}