{"id":19667,"date":"2020-08-18T16:44:13","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T16:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=19667"},"modified":"2020-08-18T16:44:14","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T16:44:14","slug":"lollygagging-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=19667","title":{"rendered":"Lollygagging Elephants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Do you <strong>lollygag<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>As a verb it means to dawdle, be lazy or idle, to avoid necessary work or effort. As a noun <strong>lollygag<\/strong> means silliness or nonsense [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/lollygag\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>I have been known to dawdle on occasion, and to loiter, tarry, dilly-dally, shilly-shally and even to procrastinate, but I rarely lollygag.<\/p>\n<p>A nice equivalent of these words in Dutch is <strong>lanterfanten<\/strong> (to loiter, loaf\/sit around, lollygag), which can be used in sentences like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Er is geen tijd om te lanterfanten, slaapkop = There&#8217;s no time to dillydally, sleepyhead<\/li>\n<li>Ik betaal ke niet om te lanterfanten = I don&#8217;t pay you to lounge about<\/li>\n<li>De olifanten lanterfanten zoals gewoonlijk = The elephants are lounging around as usual<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A <strong>lanterfanter<\/strong> is a slacker or good-for-nothing<br \/>\nand <strong>lanterfanteren<\/strong> means to waste one&#8217;s time or be lazy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lanterfanten<\/strong> comes from <strong>lanterfant<\/strong> (slacker, good-for-nothing, vagabond), from <em>landtrouwandt<\/em> (vagabond), from <em>land<\/em> (country) and <em>trouwant<\/em> (vagabond, beggar), from the Old French <em>truant<\/em> (vagabound, beggar, rogue) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/lanterfanten#Dutch\">source<\/a>], which possibly comes from the Gaulish <em>*trugan<\/em>, or from the Breton <em>truan<\/em> (wretched) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/truant#Old_French\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>A related word is <strong>treuzelen<\/strong> (to dawdle, dilly-dally, stall).<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/45260725@N08\/49006505248\/in\/photolist-2hEx9DE-2iLCcf7-2f8FV4w-28qgqHL-2aPwZfd-2jtyhpA-2itcnfQ-2iTUxQ1-Kdau1c-2i6YsiX-2e4aYwV-RuPNco-25roFsH-2a7x4oJ-29PG3F6-2hptHbE-27sgdx9-NiZXhX-HxLhH5-DC8CLB-EPf4Dr-H9Ximz-uEBNGr-5Muu68-2cX9tr9-YzK8d8-akWXYC-22zRSjU-fNr5xY-2aMNxYB-cnfzyj-3f6wUq-cnfzHA-H5Y3H-dvacPd-2cqFpJS-cnfzom-21iLJq2-auEYz9-246w7wE-2aCY9ZU-2innW8H-EsJznU-ECpYrD-FApmgf-HePUtH-2cbDbWe-o9gh7m-akUabn-S62QYH\" title=\"Elephants Kaudulla National Park\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/49006505248_957a69af0a_z.jpg\" alt=\"Elephants Kaudulla National Park\" width=\"640\" height=\"359\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you lollygag? As a verb it means to dawdle, be lazy or idle, to avoid necessary work or effort. As a noun lollygag means silliness or nonsense [source]. I have been known to dawdle on occasion, and to loiter, tarry, dilly-dally, shilly-shally and even to procrastinate, but I rarely lollygag. A nice equivalent of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,104,107,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dutch","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19667"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19673,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19667\/revisions\/19673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}