adverb
definition
In an idle manner.
definition
Without specific purpose, intent or effort.
example
I idly played with the paper, not even realizing I was folding it into a paper airplane.
Examples of idly in a Sentence
She gazed up at him, idly wondering when he was going to release her.
His cool gaze shifted idly from Felipa to Señor Medena.
The vehicle turned hesitantly and she idly wondered if Dad was letting Angela drive again.
She glanced down at the clothes, idly wondering if he was going to leave the room soon.
Yet every day thousands of miles of British bus lanes seem to stand idly by in deliberate provocation of the motoring public.
E The burrow swats idly at a fly with his tail.
She waited for him to open the conversation, idly wondering if it would be ten before he spoke.
I stepped away as he conversed with his eastern counterpart but I was too hyper to stand idly by, doing nothing.
Maybe he didn't stop Edith Shipton from taking her own life and maybe he couldn't have done so if he'd tried, but the bottom line scrawled in bold print said he stood idly by while it happened.
Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which darkened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic."
Sixth, I did not come to Washington to idly observe the squandering of the public's airwaves.
As Essara watched the daily hustle and bustle unfold he idly plucked his harp.
They have stood idly by whilst right wing media whip up racist hysteria against asylum seekers.
Some of the philosophers who talked idly of the good old times of the republic, and thus indirectly encouraged conspiracy, provoked him into reviving the obsolete penal laws against this class, but only one, Helvidius Priscus, was put to death, and he had affronted the emperor by studied insults.
I have been idly speculating about my life as a lady of leisure.
It seems to be ticking along pretty idly at the moment, serving about 20 people.
It took nearly half an hour, almost all of which involved me idly twiddling my thumbs waiting for data.
Those chuzzle characters do not simply sit idly by as you look for your next move.
His cool gaze shifted idly from Felipa to Señor Medena.
But, secondly, the pneumatic utterances technically known as speaking with tongues failed to reach this level of intelligibility; for Paul compares "a tongue" to a material object which should merely make a noise, to a pipe or harp twanged or blown at random without tune or time, to a trumpet blaring idly and not according to a code of signal notes.
The box, I, has a hinged bottom with a projecting click finger which, as the box de - scends, plays idly over the staves of a ladder arc. When the weight is removed from the platform, the counterbalance, E, causes the finger, G, to run back to its zero position, carrying with it the finger M, and causing the click finger of the box, I, to trip open the bottom of the box and let the penny fall out.