30 Mar

dillydally

Who taught: Pete

This coming Thursday, my friends and I will play basketball after work. To organize this, I sent an email to them and, in the email, I used the expression I learned from Pete, “Let’s get this show on the road!” A few hours later, Pete came to my desk to help me out to fix the broken Korean issue in my blog and we fixed it. Yay! Then, I had to ask him, “So what do you think about my usage?” Pete told me, “Well, it is more suitable to use the expression when people are with you now to do something and they are dilly dally.” Well….. He suddenly realized that ‘dilly dally’ is something I would not know. Definitely, I did not know. He started to give me some other similar type of expressions. I think they are really useful. You would hear these kind of expressions a lot in America!

1. dilly-dally : messing around, waisting time.

Example : “Come on guys! You are so dilly-dally! Let’s get this show on the road! Get off your ass!”

Korean equivalent : 꾸물꾸물 (Ggu mul Ggu mul)

2. pitter-patter: hurry up!

Example : “We gotta pitter-patter!” (I guess you can use just as it is like “Pitter patter!”)

Korean equivalent : 빨랑 빨랑 (Bbal lang bbal lang)  This one is very special for Korean. You will hear this one so many times in Korea because Korean people are always busy and want to do something fast. One thing I had a real hard time when I first got to the U.S. was the slowness of any kind of services. For example, I went to the DMV to get the driver’s license test. Well, I had to wait for an hour or so. In Korea, this would never happen. If they are this much slow, people are going crazy and almost blow the place. So, if you go to Korea and if someone is very slow to serve you, say “Hey! Bbal lang bbal lang!” with very angry face. They will get it! 🙂

3. wishy-washy : indecisive or ineffective

Example : Well you will see this in newspapers so many times when they describe any politicians who is not decisive in some area or topic.

Korean equivalent : 우유부단 (Woo yoo bu dan) This one is originated from Chinese.

4. roly-poly : little overweight (?) Not sure this means someone really overweight or someone like chubby. By hearing it, I feel like this is more like chubby, right?

Korean equivalent : 포동포동 (Po dong Po dong) I would say this is not really insulting to anyone. Especially, if a baby is a little chubby, you can use it to the baby like “Oh, your baby is Po dong Po dong!”

5. willy-nilly : all over the place in a bad way

Example : I cannot come up with one. Could you provide one?

Korean equivalent : 오지랖 넓다(O zi rab Neol Da) This is hard to pronounce. Don’t try it! 🙂

So, I think these expressions are onomatopoeic words or mimetic words. Am I right? There must be so many more than these. You should all help me out! And, also, can I make up by myself like…. hmm ….. “ding dang”? I have not decided what it should mean.

24 thoughts on “dillydally

  1. Come on guys! You are so dilly-dally

    It’s not used as an adjective, it’s more like a verb, so it would be more like “Come on guys! We’re late, don’t dilly-dally!”

    We gotta pitter-patter!

    I’ve also never heard this used like this, pitter-patter to me has only been used to describe new born children “The pitter-patter of little feet”

    • Hmm. When I speak or hear “pitter-patter”, I feel like it should mean “hurry” I guess I would not use this one and if I hear I should catch the meaning based on the context. So hard…. I don’t like it 🙂

        • So, the meaning of pitter-patter I got in my post is off. Guys, please ignore the definition over there in the post. But, Korean equivalent one is very useful. So, practice it if you are gonna visit Korea.

  2. It is a time honored tradition of English to make up new words all willy-nilly, so if you start using ‘ding dang’ in a consistent manner, people will start getting it!

    There’s an example /and/ an answer.

    At home, we call grated parmesan cheese ‘shooka shooka’ because you shake it out of the container and it sort of makes that sound?

  3. I want to say Bbali-Bbali might be better Korean equivalent for ” Pitter-patter”, Because Usually, people who use the word of Bbalang Bbalng are only females or kids.

    P.S Phil! I’ve heard of your news! Terry and I are gonna miss you.

    • I guess I should agree with you. Maybe the reason I used “BBa lang BBa lang” is because I am still a kid. How about that?

  4. Hi Terry! I’m Carol’s sister. She and Jake showed me your blog when they were here in AZ and I’ve enjoyed reading it. An expression I like is “mumbo jumbo” but I’m not sure how often this phrase is used by others. If someone was talking and going on about something that didn’t make sense and I didn’t agree with, I would say, “that’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo”.

    Formal definition found online –
    mumbo jumbo – noun
    1. gibberish, nonsense, double talk. “It’s all full of psychoanalytic mumbo jumbo.”
    2. superstition, magic, ritual, hocus-pocus. “He dabbled in all sorts of mumbo jumbo.”

    And I agree with you about roly-poly – it is more cute and chubby rather than obese

    • Hi Patty! Nice to see you here! I am so glad you are enjoying my blog. I guess other people also use “mumbo jumbo” since there is formal definition of it. I will use this one to Jake later. Today, he told me something bad. I will revenge him tomorrow by saying, “That is a total mumbo jumbo.” Oh, it is funny though that this one is not used as verb. The other ones are usually used as verbs, I guess.

  5. A few more for you:

    hanky panky: unethical behavior or illicit sexual acts

    Like, “I don’t want to see any hanky panky behind the bleachers!”

    higgledy piggledy: see “willy nilly”

    hocus-pocus: (also: voodoo) magic

    As in, “That’s some crazy hocus pocus!” or “That’s some crazy voodoo!”

      • Willy-nilly and higgledy-piggledy don’t have bad connotations, per se.

        They give a sort of goofy or child-like feeling. You’d say something like “The hyperactive suger-fed children ran higgledy piggledy around the yard.” and it means they ran around a lot in a disorganized way.

        Another example: “His dirty clothes were thrown around the room willy-nilly.” It gives the impression that the subject is a bit immature in addition to a slob. It’s is a week implication, though. Don’t depend on it.

        If you wanted to really make the subject childish, you need to do more work, such as: “His dirty clothes were strewn around the room willy-nilly, as if in a temper tantrum.” In this case, I threw in two childish indicators: “willy-nilly” and “temper tantrum”. Both are childish, but the latter is more so. The combination paints a fairly immature picture. Understandable if the subject is 8, not so much if he is 25.

        Ciao!

  6. A bunch of these have a ‘silly’ or ‘child-like’ connotation to them. I think it is because they rhyme and because of the mental imagery.

    Roly-poly, for example, when you say it conjures up images of something rolling. Wikipedia defines it as anything approximating spherical. So if you call someone roly-poly, you sort of give the mental image that they might tip over and roll around.

  7. Pingback: Tweets that mention dillydally | Learning English from Friends (LEfF) -- Topsy.com

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