1 (of people) lazy; not working hard:
an idle student
2 (of machines, factories, etc.) not in use:
to lie / stand / remain idle
3 (of people) without work; unemployed:
Over ten per cent of the workforce is now idle.
4 [usuallybeforenoun] with no particular purpose or effect; useless:
idle chatter / curiosity * It was just an idle threat (= not serious). * It is idle to pretend that their marriage is a success.
5 [usuallybeforenoun] (of time) not spent doing work or sth particular:
In idle moments, he carved wooden figures.
idleness noun [U]:
After a period of enforced idleness, she found a new job.
Part of speech: verb
1 [usually +adv./prep.] (written) to spend time doing nothing important:
[VN] They idled the days away, talking and watching television. * [V] They idled along by the river (= walked slowly and with no particular purpose).
2 [V] (of an engine) to run slowly while the vehicle is not moving
SYNTICKOVER:
She left the car idling at the roadside.
3 [VN] (AmE) to close a factory, etc. or stop providing work for the workers, especially temporarily:
The strikes have idled nearly 4000 workers.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for idle is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is idle a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, idle is tagged as adjective.
Does idle appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — idle appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
