Dawdln'

DAWDLIN’

I just love this word.  Don’t ask me why, because I really haven’t figured that out yet.  But I do, especially as it is written above.  It just rolls off your tongue softly and sweetly, with no edge to it.  It tickles me, gives me joy, and always puts a smile on my face.

On the other hand, Procrastinate, which can be substituted for dawdle, according to Roget’s, definitely does not roll of your tongue nicely.  It is hard and sharp.  I don’t like the word procrastinate.  It puts me on edge.  It makes my teeth hurt to even say it.  I get a headache even thinking about it.

I looked up both words in my dictionary and in my thesaurus.  They can be substituted for one another.  Did you know that “dawdle” in Roget’s Thesaurus has 34 different words and phrases that mean the same thing?  And that “procrastinate has only 32?  And they both appear in each other’s list.

Some of words that Roget’s say can replace “dawdle” I find totally amusing such as “get no place fast” – I think people need to relax.  “Fritter away” reminds me of apple fritters in a frying pan.  “Loaf” – a bag of bread.  “Hang out” – clothes on a line outside, getting that yummy fresh smell of clean air.  “Fool around” – isn’t that what teenagers do when they park??  Or at least that is what I did when I was a teenager!

“Saunter”  - that is a way of walking, as is “amble or schlep along.”  I don’t connect either of those words to “dawdle.”  “Scrounge around” reminds me of someone going through garbage containers or at a dump.  We had a dump up on the hill behind our house, that people used to use.  I can remember Dick and I going up there and “scrounging around” for treasure.   Sometimes we found it – neat old bottles and such.  Once I found a silver half dollar inside of an envelope.  I was rich!

“Sit on one’s butt” – that’s a pretty graphic description.  I can think of a more graphic word for butt, but I won’t use it.  But how is that “dawdlin’”?  Every time we sit, we are sitting on our butt, aren’t we?  The same can go for another phrase used for “dawdle” – “Warm a chair” – come on folks, most of our butt’s are warm, and of course they warm the chairs we sit in. 

“Trifle” is another word – Trifle to me is a wonderful rich dessert that comes originally, if I am not mistaken, from England.  It can be made with sponge cake or pound cake, with berries and jelly and vanilla pudding or whipped cream.  How can that be exchanged for “dawdle”?  I don’t think so.

“Procrastinate,” that horrible bad word, which Roget’s says can be exchanged for that lovely warm word, “dawdle”, even has some strange words and phrases that they say can be exchanged for the “P” word.  “Retard” really really offends me as I consider that word an unkind one, used by many uneducated people to describe other people.  “Play a waiting game” – that’s what I do when I play Scrabble – wait and wait and wait.

“Poke” – does this mean that one goes around poking others in the ribs?  That’s not very nice.  “Let slide” – I used to take my kids to a local hill in the winter and “let them slide” down it.  “Stall” – isn’t that where horses live and eat their hay and oats, when they come in from a day on the range?

There are the rhyming ones – “shilly shally” – “dilly dally” – I really think they belong in Mother Goose rhymes, don’t you.  “Shilly shally up the hill to fetch a pail of water, dilly dally down the hill, with Silly Sally coming after.”  I kind of like that!

Then there are words and phrases that I don’t know what they mean, and will have to get my trusty dictionary and look them up. When my kids would ask what a word meant, I would reply, “Look it up in the dictionary.” I don’t know what “be dilatory” means, or “temporize”.  And “gold brick” used as an substitution seems strange to me.  I thought a gold brick was either a unit of currency or “to gold brick” meant to try to get into the favor of another person, preferably well known or wealthy or influential.  What’s that got to do with “dawdlin’?”

Okay, I am “dawdlin’” and need stop “warming my chair” and “sitting on my butt.”  I’m going to dawdle on down the road, go to Don Juan’s, and eat lunch and dawdle with my lunch bunch.  Can’t be better than that, methinks!

Life is good.

I love you all,

Sally

P.S. Back from dawdlin’ with my group at lunch.  I looked up “dilatory” and “temporize” and they could be substitutions in some cases, but my 1990 Webster’s New World Paperback Dictionary does not list “gold brick.”  Any suggestions?????