Sidle
name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 An act of sidling.; A sideways movement.
"[I]n this mythic America, we fly along in the fast lane, placing bets against flashing lights in the rearview mirror, against the dreaded sidle into the gravel and the voice at the window demanding our license."
- 2 An act of sidling.; A furtive advance.
"Listener up there! Here you … what have you to confide in me? / Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, / Talk honestly, for no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer."
- 1 To (cause something to) move sideways. also, ambitransitive, figuratively
"[F]rom the circle of delighted auditors listening to the gentillesses of the pink cockatoo, who was sidling on his stand in the sunshine, a whole party of the Beresfords caught sight of me, and in a minute I was surrounded; [...]"
- 2 move sideways wordnet
- 3 In the intransitive sense often followed by up: to (cause something to) advance in a coy, furtive, or unobtrusive manner. also, ambitransitive, figuratively
"There was one little prim old lady, of very smiling and good-humoured appearance, who came sidling up to me from the end of a long passage, [...]"
- 4 move unobtrusively or furtively wordnet
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"Watch him sidle as he tries to avoid us."
Etymology
The verb is from side + -le (frequentative suffix), possibly a back-formation from sideling (“in a sidelong direction; askew, obliquely”, adverb), treating that word as the present participle of sidle. The noun is derived from the verb.
Variant of Siddall.
More for "sidle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.