dalliance

plural dalliances

1. countableuncountablePlayful flirtation; amorous play.First known use 14th c.

   If this were the case, his return showed that the struggle had been unsuccessful, for Lily knew he was not the man to waste his time in an ineffectual sentimental dalliance.

   1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   As in the season of rutting (an uncouth phrase, by which the vulgar denote that gentle dalliance, which in the well-wooded forest of Hampshire, passes between lovers of the ferine kind),

   1749, Henry Fielding, chapter XI, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book V

   “Mark,” said Gabriel, sternly, “now you mind this: none of that dalliance-talk—that philandering way—that dandle-smack-and-coddle style of yours—about Miss Everdene. I don’t allow it. Do you hear?”

   1874, Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC

   But that dalliance has been dashed in less than three months, with the developer now claiming the Trump brand is now too “toxic” to work with – and the Trump Organization responding that their local partner had provided only “empty promise, after empty promise”.

   2026 May 13, Joe Hinchliffe, “Plan for $1.5bn Trump Tower on Gold Coast scrapped because brand ‘toxic to Australians’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: flirtation

2. countableuncountableAn episode of dabbling.
3. countableuncountableA wasting of time in idleness or trifles.First known use 16th c.

   He had passed the officer now. There was no necessity for dalliance. He pressed the accelerator down a trifle.

   1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mad King, A.C. McClurg, published 1926

   3 more examples

   Emerging, satiated, from the theatre, a public timepiece before a jeweller's shop confronted him with an unexpected dial and imminent perplexities. How was he to explain at home these hours of dalliance?

   1914, Booth Tarkington, Penrod, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC

   But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance—one shouldn't palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said.

   1922, Michael Arlen, “2/4/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days

   Quite a few minutes would be spun out, for instance, at the smallish town of Chirk, but to me the dalliance was generally worthwhile, except in wet weather, because of the increasing beauty of the wooded hill scenery thereabouts.

   1955 January, R. S. McNaught, “From the Severn to the Mersey by Great Western”, in Railway Magazine, page 18

   Synonyms: dawdling, idling, trifling

4. countableuncountableA sexual relationship, not serious but often illicit.

   Synonyms: affair, affairette, fling, liaison