drawl

present singular third person drawls · participle present drawling · participle past drawled · past drawled

1. transitiveTo drag on slowly and heavily; to dawdle or while away time indolently.
2. transitiveTo utter or pronounce in a dull, spiritless tone, as if by dragging out the utterance.
3. intransitiveTo move slowly and heavily; to move in a dull, slow, lazy manner.

   Looke what leysure the old bearded Bawd takes / How softly she goes / How one leg comes drawling after another / Now she has her money, her armes are broken.

   1631, Fernando de Rojas, The Spanish bavvd, represented in Celestina …, page 36

   1 more example

   Tush, tush, Tarleton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of Fooles that now come drawling behinde them, neuer plaid the Clownes more naturally then the arrantest Sot of you all, shall, if hee will but boyle my Instructions in his brainepan.

   1609, Thomas Dekker, The guls horne-booke, pages 3-4

4. intransitiveTo speak with a slow, spiritless utterance, as from affectation, laziness, or lack of interest.

   talk sometimes a pestilence , and sometimes a hero , mostly in a drawling and dreaming way about it

   1828, Walter Savage Landor, “Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC

plural drawls

1. A way of speaking slowly while lengthening vowel sounds and running words together, characteristic of some Southern US accents, as well as Broad Australian, Broad New Zealand, and Scots.