Meaning & use
Idled
Last updated
Spent time doing nothing productive, or, for an engine, ran at a slow speed while not engaged in gear.
See it in a sentence
They idled away the summer afternoon by the lake.
The taxi idled at the curb while the driver waited for his passenger.
A note on using this word
The mechanical sense, describing an engine running without doing work, became common with the rise of the automobile in the 20th century.
Words with a similar meaning
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Words with an opposite meaning
workedlabored
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