Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Dalliance
1.
The act of dallying, trifling, or fondling; interchange of caresses; wanton play.
Look thou be true, do not give
Too much the rein.
dalliance
Too much the rein.
Shakespeare
O, the
The flattery and the strife!
dalliance
and the wit,The flattery and the strife!
Tennyson.
2.
Delay or procrastination.
Shak.
3.
Entertaining discourse.
[Obs.]
Chaucer.
Webster 1828 Edition
Dalliance
DAL'LIANCE
,Noun.
1.
Literally, delay; a lingering; appropriately, acts of fondness; interchange of caresses; toying, as males and females; as youthful dalliance.2.
Conjugal embraces; commerce of the sexes.3.
Delay.Definition 2024
dalliance
dalliance
English
Noun
dalliance (plural dalliances)
- Playful flirtation; amorous play. [from 14th c.]
- 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Book V, chapter xi
- As in the season of rutting (an uncouth phrase, by which the vulgar denote that gentle dalliance, which in the well-wooded forest of Hampshire, passes between lovers of the ferine kind),
- 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Book V, chapter xi
- A wasting of time in idleness or trifles. [from 16th c.]
- 1922, Michael Arlen, chapter 2/4/1, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:
- But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance—one shouldn't palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said.
-
- A sexual relationship, not serious but often illicit.
Synonyms
- (playful flirtation): flirtation
- (a wasting of time): dawdling, idling, trifling
- (sexual relationship): affair
Related terms
Translations
playful flirtation
a wasting of time in idleness or trifles
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A sexual relationship, not serious but often illicit
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