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, volume (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^[1]:

     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.

   • 1955 January, R. S. McNaught, “From the Severn to the Mersey by Great Western”, in Railway Magazine, page 18:

     Quite a few minutes would be spun out, for instance, at the smallish town of Chirk, but to me the dalliance was generally worthwhile, except in wet weather, because of the increasing beauty of the wooded hill scenery thereabouts.

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

   Synonyms: affair, affairette, fling, liaison

• dallier
• dally
• dallying

• allianced