Lollygagging means wasting time or moving slowly when you should be working or hurrying. When your teacher tells the class to stop lollygagging and get to work, she means everyone should quit dawdling and focus on their assignments. When a coach yells “No lollygagging!” at practice, he wants players to hustle between drills instead of wandering around.

The word has a playful, old-fashioned sound that makes it fun to say, but it describes something genuinely frustrating: someone taking forever to do something simple. If you're lollygagging on your way to the car when your family's trying to leave, you're probably tying your shoe for the third time, staring at a bug, or just moving at a snail's pace for no good reason.

Lollygagging isn't the same as taking a break or resting when you need it. It's about goofing off or being unnecessarily slow when there's something you should be doing. A student who spends twenty minutes sharpening pencils before starting homework is lollygagging. Someone who takes a deliberate ten-minute walk to clear their head is doing something different entirely.