What's the difference between dawdle and loiter?

Dawdle


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To waste time in trifling employment; to trifle; to saunter.
  • (v. t.) To waste by trifling; as, to dawdle away a whole morning.
  • (n.) A dawdler.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He moved into the area, dawdled and measured a pass to Herrera whose side-foot finish deflected off Laurent Koscielny for what turned out to be the winner.
  • (2) Just as the game seemed to be petering out to a draw, Vardy robbed a dawdling Gareth McAuley of possession near halfway and drove forward before finding the bottom left corner of Boaz Myhill’s goal.
  • (3) Because the longer the league dawdles in its headquarters' backyard, the closer Orlando is to its stadium deal, making its franchise allocation incontestable.
  • (4) Even the structure of rivers changed as elk, harassed by a new predator, were unable to casually dawdle on the riverbanks.
  • (5) Guzan, dawdling in possession, was given the hurry up by the referee and tossed the ball to Ron Vlaar.
  • (6) Fantastic Four review - a dawdling indie drama dressed up in superhero garb Read more There was better news for The Gift , a psychological thriller starring Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall which marks Australian actor Joel Edgerton’s debut as a director.
  • (7) We’re all in a relay race with the ghosts of the past and the mewling newborns, there’s no time to dawdle.” Looking round today, does she see any remnants of that spirit of punk and rebellion that first made her pick up a magazine and a scalpel in the 70s?
  • (8) Giggs, who joined the small band of footballers aged 40 to feature in the competition with this appearance, became the latest player in red to dawdle when he lost the ball, allowing Teixeira to again skate through and create more worry.
  • (9) Garmash dawdled, Fernando stole the ball, and when it was recycled to Agüero the striker’s run was clever as it peeled off to the right but the finish was less so, blazing across Shovkovskiy and wide.
  • (10) They have impressive pace and power on the counterattack and the final substitute, Wilfried Zaha, robbed a dawdling Laurent Koscielny but he could not release Adebayor in the middle.
  • (11) If so, the soporific way Per Mertesacker dawdled in possession and Kieran Gibbs clumsily punted the ball into the air suggested there had been scant impact.
  • (12) Ramires’s early header, thumped down and through Simon Mignolet as he burst beyond a dawdling Alberto Moreno, was a false dawn.
  • (13) Just as the speed cameras on the A66 hereabouts bring traffic to a momentary dawdle, so Sharp Edge and Foule Crag directly overhead arrest the progress of the faster hilltop climbers making their way up the mountain, the 700ft of Skiddaw slate knife-blade needing extra concentration and care when iced.
  • (14) Reading is delayed gratification, as you dawdle through the development for the payoff.
  • (15) The Northern Ireland international had been ignored by Chelsea’s midfield shield, with Willian and Cesc Fàbregas dawdling.
  • (16) Messi was dawdling in an offside position after a Barcelona move had broken down and his clever positioning made it almost impossible for City to stop him.
  • (17) 8.25pm GMT 37 min: Wes Brown dawdles on the ball as he attempts to walk it out from the back and gets robbed of possession by Azpilicueta, who prods the ball towards Eto'o, who tries to tee up a shooting opportunity.
  • (18) Moments later, Adam Johnson hung on the last Everton man waiting for a quick pass to release him but when Sebastian Larsson dawdled before flipping the ball over momentum was lost and the manager struck a hand in frustration.
  • (19) Here was jubilation for City and a key away goal but emotion changed to dismay when, on 41 minutes, Fernando dawdled over a pass out from Hart.
  • (20) Milner should have increased their lead moments later after being sent clear by Firmino, but the midfielder’s dawdling allowed Robbie Brady to poke the ball away.

Loiter


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To be slow in moving; to delay; to linger; to be dilatory; to spend time idly; to saunter; to lag behind.
  • (v. i.) To wander as an idle vagrant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Neither in nor out of the house, visible but not seen, you could lurk here for an hour undisturbed, you could loiter for a day.
  • (2) Ward ignored a weak challenge from young Darnell Furlong as two more experienced Rangers’ players loitered in the vicinity with little intent, then Ward made his way into the box and struck a shot that deflected off Sandro into the net.
  • (3) Grafitti cakes his entrance hall, there is no heating, the lift has been broken for months and unemployed youths loiter with nothing to do.
  • (4) She wouldn't be found haunting the scene of the crime, as it were; loitering in the kitchen, in the maternity ward, at the school gate.
  • (5) As he puts it in his book Cities Under Siege: "The possibility of deploying swarms of armed and unarmed robots to loiter persistently across regions of the world deemed trouble spots is clearly a good fit with the Pentagon's latest thinking surrounding the long war."
  • (6) No wonder Roger Burman, Winterhill's barrel-chested headteacher, was beaming on Thursday morning as he welcomed a line of nervous teenagers into the school hall, some of whom confessed they had been awake since 5am ("and I usually get up at 1pm", giggled Amy Jones as she loitered outside).
  • (7) Deborah Kerr's screen name had loitered for a dozen years somewhere in the back of my brain.
  • (8) This game had ambled along cagily for almost half an hour, Uruguay tigerishly setting about stifling any hint of Colombian ascendancy, when Abel Aguilar nodded the ball forward to Rodríguez, loitering with his back to goal in a pocket of space just outside the Uruguay penalty area.
  • (9) 2.27am BST Ringside Kevin Mitchell in Las Vegas writes: Although there is a lot of loitering still, this terrific arena already has given Ashley Theophane his biggest audience, maybe half of the 16,000 capacity.
  • (10) Shani Pinney, a department official, said on Monday that such offenders were barred from working or volunteering in schools and from “loitering on school property”.
  • (11) It was barely disrupted when Darmian – who had at times looked a weak link after loitering in possession – dislocated a shoulder after challenging for a 50-50 ball with Khazri and was replaced by Donald Love, a Scotland Under-21 international.
  • (12) But stagnation remains the cloud loitering overhead, and, if the economy sulks its way through 2012 and living standards continue to fall, the polls may shift as voters' patience wears out.
  • (13) Analyses by five major diagnostic groups showed that patients with a primary diagnosis of drug or alcohol abuse had the greatest overall frequency of arrests and also the greatest frequency of arrests for burglary, offenses against public order such as peace disturbance or loitering, and probation and parole violations.
  • (14) As conditions are made safe for these blithe cretins they become more dangerous for Sherpas, whose job is to loiter in the dangerous parts of the mountain and secure them for ever greater numbers of incompetents to hurry through, en route to their photographs on the top of the world.
  • (15) "This guy is making me lose my concentration," he complains later as another man loiters nearby.
  • (16) In the suburb of Wilberforce, in an old building for the telecommunications company Airtel, a dozen students loiter on a wall waiting to relieve staff from the trauma at the Ebola hotline they are manning.
  • (17) Father Toño, who moved here from Madrid 14 years ago, chats over coffee while his guards – whose presence is the result of death threats from drug traffickers – loiter outside.
  • (18) While protest charges have typically been seen as tantamount to nuisance crimes, like trespassing or loitering, these were different.
  • (19) A berry meringue roulade to whip sad whites into shape and a thick, sharp lemon curd to save the souls of any feckless yolks left loitering about your fridge.
  • (20) Time to loiter in bookshops and catch a nice boy's eye over a copy of Patti Smith's autobiography?