without any particular reason, purpose or effort; doing nothing:
She sat in the sun, idly sipping a cool drink. * He wondered idly what would happen. * We can't stand idly by (= do nothing) and let people starve.
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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 idly is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is idly a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, idly is tagged as adverb.
Does idly appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — idly 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.