noun
definition
An idle animation.
definition
An idle game.
synonyms
verb
definition
To spend in idleness; to waste; to consume.
definition
To lose or spend time doing nothing, or without being employed in business.
definition
Of an engine: to run at a slow speed, or out of gear; to tick over.
adjective
definition
Empty, vacant.
definition
Not being used appropriately; not occupied; (of time) with no, no important, or not much activity.
example
My computer hibernates after it has been idle for 30 minutes.
definition
Not engaged in any occupation or employment; unemployed; inactive; doing nothing in particular.
example
idle workmen
definition
Averse to work, labor or employment; lazy; slothful.
example
an idle fellow
definition
Of no importance; useless; worthless; vain; trifling; thoughtless; silly.
example
an idle story; idle talk; idle rumor
definition
Light-headed; foolish.
Examples of idle in a Sentence
I've been idle too long.
I was only making idle conversation anyway.
Somehow I get the idea that you will find it harder to be idle than working.
That is an idle dream.
Whether another head of the Church could have prevented the defection of England is of course an idle question.
Various idle stories are related about him.
She realized he wasn't telling her a story just for idle talk.
But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active.
After embarrassed apologies, she seemed compelled to sit down and chat, as if idle conversation might be penance for the pilfered peach pie.
I hope that, after reading this far, you appreciate that for our age, this is no idle boast.
Though idle, Tone had considerable ability.
It is to the public interest that deposits of mineral should not be permitted to remain idle and undeveloped.
Natasha had no desire to go out anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and listless.
He revoked numerous pensions and grants conferred by his predecessors upon idle courtiers, and, meeting the reproach of sacrilege made by the patriarch of Constantinople by a decree of exile, resumed a proportion of the revenues of the wealthy monasteries.
As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous.
If I happen to be all alone and in an idle mood, I play a game of solitaire, of which I am very fond.
But I must not waste my time wishing idle wishes; and after all my ancient friends are very wise and interesting, and I usually enjoy their society very much indeed.
It was simply idle conversation about everything from the weather to politics.
He dismissed them as the idle talk of jealous nobles at court, who'd wanted him to marry one of their daughters instead.
After a somewhat idle youth he betook himself to poetry.
And when he came to the nut trees, and saw the shells left by the idle fairies and all the traces of their frolic, he knew exactly how they had acted, and that they had disobeyed him by playing and loitering on their way through the woods.
Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the Rostovs' there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the habits and acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that bore him along irresistibly.
I read a passage in a novel last evening as I sat by the fire, trying to wile away these idle hours.
It gave him some level of confidence that her warning was one born of necessity, not idle speculation.
His position was assured, at least temporarily, in 617, when he decided to espouse the cause of the Northumbrian prince Edwin, then a fugitive at his court, and defeated zEthelfrith of Northumbria on the banks of the Idle, a tributary of the Trent, in Mercian territory.
I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life."
Even the emperor had to be content to be treated by the sultan as an inferior and tributary prince; while France had to suffer, with no more than an idle protest, the insult of the conversion of Catholic churches at Constantinople into mosques.
There is never any seen idle; the head of the house governs it not by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentleness and amiable manners.
How these revelations actually arose in Mahomet's mind is a question which it is almost as idle to discuss as it would be to analyse the workings of the mind of a poet.
Nor was that enterprise one of idle conquest.
Idle computer time employed to solve the world's problems.
But I must put away these idle fancies until we meet again.
All this had charms for me alone and did not deserve to be revealed to idle curiosity.
After proving that the secular rulers were free and in duty bound to correct the evils of the Church, Luther sketches a plan for preventing money from going to Italy, for reducing the number of idle, begging monks, harmful pilgrimages and excessive holidays.
It is evil desires, low ideals, useless cravings, idle excitements, that are to be suppressed by the cultivation of the opposite of right desires, lofty aspirations.
Amid all the vicissitudes of his early manhood Botta had never allowed his pen to be long idle, and in the political quiet that followed 1816 he naturally devoted himself more exclusively to literature.
Robert Burns, the poet, in a letter dated August 1784, describes the sect as idle and immoral.
Between these dates Houdon had not been idle; busts of Catharine II., Diderot and Prince Galitzin were remarked at the Salon of 1773, and at that of 1775 he produced, not only his Morpheus in marble, but busts of Turgot, Gluck (in which the marks of small-pox in the face were reproduced with striking effect) and Sophie Arnould as Iphigeneia (now in the Wallace Collection, London), together with his well-known marble relief, "Grive suspendue par les pattes."
The last great assault was delivered with more precision, if with less fury than the others, and had Dannenberg chosen to employ the 9000 bayonets of his reserve, who stood idle throughout the day, to support the 6000 half-spent troops who made the attack, it would probably have been successful.
I'll just have to get used to being idle.
During these terms of imprisonment his pen was not idle, as is amply shown by the very numerous letters, pastorals and exhortations which have been preserved; while during his intervals of liberty he was unwearied in the work of "declaring truth" in all parts of the country.
This can cause a hesitation, stumble and/or rough idle problem as well.
The kids are left idle with nothing to do.
The role of idle spectator is unworthy of America.
Idle Duck sailing after the rig was upgraded with a big roller reefing jib.
It is idle indeed to rewrite the Gospel narratives in the Aramaic dialect spoken by Christ and the apostles, but the main watchwords of the Gospel theology - phrases like " the Kingdom of God," " the World to come," the " Father in Heaven," " the Son of Man," - can be more or less surely reconstructed from Jewish writings, and their meaning gauged apart from the special significance which they received in Christian hands.
But it is not good for me to sit idle while you work.
You may not recognize your dog's bark or the idle of your car's engine, but without being told, you probably do recognize the sound of a phaser blast, a transporter powering up, or a communicator flipping open.
Meanwhile other competitors were not idle.
They are described as an idle, depraved people, spending their time for the most part in loitering about the harbour, or carousing over the fine wine of Maronea.