SHILLY-SHALLYING

In “Goodnight Mister Tom” (Michelle Magorian), Mister Tom loses his patience with a maddening doctor and tells him to “stop shilly-shallying and tell me about the boy.”

 (First published in 1981, the story of the elderly Mister Tom and Willie, the evacuee who came to stay with him, won many awards and was made into a play, a musical and a TV drama.)


 The term “shilly-shallying” means to act indecisively. It’s believed to originate from a tendency for indecisive people to repeatedly ask “shall I?” when trying to make a decision [1].

 Examples:

 “The second terminal in Montijo is ‘very important for the country’, and shilly-shallying is delaying progress . . .”

 “Still, that’s not to say that a loo seat will beat time-wasting, shilly-shallying and general unnecessary lingering.”

 “But the shilly-shallying over HS2 has even bigger implications, both for the Midlands and the north, as well as for international confidence in a post-Brexit Britain.”


 Photo credit: Gustavo H. Braga (Creative Commons)

 [1] Cresswell, Julia. “shilly-shally” in The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins. Oxford University Press, 2009.