DillydallyWord for the Wise October 20, 2006 Broadcast Topic: Dillydally No dillydallying today: we are getting directly to the question of how dillydally made its way into our lexicon.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: dillydally is a reduplication of dally.
Reduplication is the term for an often grammatically functional repetition of a radical element or a part of it occurring usually at the beginning of a word and often accompanied by a change of the radical vowel.
(来源：2hzz.
com) To dally is to act playfully or deal lightly.
To dally is also to waste time; linger; or dawdle.
This latter sense is the one that gave us dillydally, meaning to waste time by loitering or delaying; to dawdle.
To dawdle is to spend time lackadaisically, that is, with a carefree indifference marked by halfhearted efforts.
We won’t waste any time on the stories behind dawdle and dally (unknown, and none too interesting, respectively: dally comes from the Anglo-French dalier), but lackadaisical does have a doozy of a history.
It comes from lackaday, a now-archaic term used to express regret or deprecation that was itself a shortening and alteration of the synonymous (and also-archaic) alack the day.