dalliance

From Middle English daliaunce et al., from dalien (“to exchange pleasantries, to chat; to flirt”), from Old French dalier, dailer. By surface analysis, dally +‎ -ance.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈdalɪəns/

  • Audio (Southern England)

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈdæli.əns/

dalliance (countable and uncountable, plural dalliances)

1. Playful flirtation; amorous play. [from 14th c.]

   Synonym: flirtation

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

     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),

2. An episode of dabbling.
3. A wasting of time in idleness or trifles. [from 16th c.]

   Synonyms: dawdling, idling, trifling

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

     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.

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

   Synonyms: affair, affairette, fling, liaison

• dallier
• dally
• dallying

• allianced