Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To move sideways.
- intransitive verb To advance in an unobtrusive, furtive, or coy way.
- intransitive verb To cause to move sideways.
- noun An unobtrusive, furtive, or coy advance.
- noun A sideways movement.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To move sidewise or obliquely; edge along slowly or with effort; go aslant, as while looking in another direction.
- To saunter idly about in no particular direction.
- To cause to move in a sidling manner; direct the course of sidewise.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To go or move with one side foremost; to move sidewise.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A sideways
movement . - noun A furtive advance.
- verb To
move sideways . - verb To
advance in afurtive ,coy orunobtrusive manner.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb move unobtrusively or furtively
- verb move sideways
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The instinct that we all have he should face some sort of electoral process is unlikely to trouble the incanting Labour Droogs hereabouts about for but for ordinary working men like me, a sinister clerk does not sidle from the shadows and thereby become Caesar.
Archive 2007-07-01 Newmania 2007
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The instinct that we all have he should face some sort of electoral process is unlikely to trouble the incanting Labour Droogs hereabouts about for but for ordinary working men like me, a sinister clerk does not sidle from the shadows and thereby become Caesar.
Cannot Resist Newmania 2007
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The Black Caucus in the House, even Charlie Rangel, who -- you know, who can get up on his high horse literally, pretty easily, even though Mr. Rangel did sort of kind of sidle up to it, there wasn't that -- that outcry that you would normally get from the Black Caucus when they think that a black person is being dealt with unfairly.
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I have people come up to me all the time, kind of sidle up and nudge me in the ribs and say, hey, I hear you or see you on Imus -- I hear you on Imus, you know?
CNN Transcript - Larry King Live: Don Imus Discusses Campaign 2000 - August 11, 2000 2000
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Every herdsman and shepherd knows the danger to be apprehended from the inclination of some of either kind to "sidle" off from the plain and beaten track and pluck the green leaves of the laurel to their own destruction.
Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk John Kline 1830
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Did they kind of sidle up to you and go, So, you're turning 50?
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Whenever someone whips out an iPhone on the subway, I kind of sidle over as if pulled by some kind of magnetic force, and steal furtive glances over their shoulder at their p ...
PSFK 2008
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He was inquisitive and would sidle up to my mother on her towel and carefully remove each leaf.
Bird Cloud Annie Proulx 2011
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And the juniors behind us, in looking forward to the same freedoms that we will soon be tasting, sidle up close and in a whisper ask the name of my OB.
Between Expectations Md Meghan Maclean Weir 2011
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Actually, here in Hollywood where almost everyone in a coffee shop has a laptop rather than a book, the fact that a woman is reading a book at all probably tells Bob everything he needs to know to sidle up beside her and strike up a conversation.
Allison Hill: Literary Seductions Allison Hill 2011
brtom commented on the word sidle
"She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off." Joyce, Ulysses, 15
January 1, 2008