IDLE in a Sentence

Learn IDLE from example sentences, some of them are from classic books. These examples are selected from a corpus with 300,000 sentences, including classic works and current mainstream media. Some sentences also link to their contexts.

For IDLE, below is one of 192 sentences:
And England was coming in to help the Confederacy win the war, because the English mills were standing idle for want of Southern cotton.

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 Meanings and Examples of IDLE
Definition Example Sentence Classic Sentence
idle
 a.  given rest and ease; avoiding work or employment; lazy or vain
Classic Sentence: (165 in 12 pages)
1  Already the foundries were beginning to feel the lack of iron, for little or none came through the blockade, and the mines in Alabama were standing almost idle while the miners were at the front.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER VIII
2  And England was coming in to help the Confederacy win the war, because the English mills were standing idle for want of Southern cotton.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER IX
3  The cotton mills of England were standing idle and the workers were starving, and any blockader who could outwit the Yankee fleet could command his own price in Liverpool.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XII
4  This Bureau, organized by the Federal government to take care of the idle and excited ex-slaves, was drawing them from the plantations into the villages and cities by the thousands.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XXXI
5  They were standing idle because both Hugh and Ashley feared to leave their families alone all day.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XLII
6  One morning, the old man had driven her to Hugh's mill and she had found it idle, the negroes gone and Hugh sitting despondently under a tree.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER XLII
7  Why, we three have been--have been like soldiers fighting the world together for so many years that I'm ashamed of you for thinking idle gossip could come between us.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER LV
8  When he came, we were pleasantly surprised, most pleasantly, and realized how un-Christian it is to credit idle gossip.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER LVI
9  And of course Bertha has been idle since.
House of Mirth By Edith Wharton
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 1: Chapter 4
10  Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty was now altogether dispensed with.
Moby Dick By Herman Melville
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.
11  He would write for a while, then sit idle, his clenched fist lying on the table, his eyes following the pattern of the oilcloth.
My Antonia By Willa Cather
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 1. The Shimerdas: XII
12  I could sit idle all through a Sunday morning and look at her.
My Antonia By Willa Cather
Context  Highlight   In BOOK 3. Lena Lingard: IV
13  This was "piece-work," of course; and besides it was made certain that the boy did not idle, by setting the machine to match the highest possible speed of human hands.
The Jungle By Upton Sinclair
Context  Highlight   In Chapter 20
14  There was one man, however, who, by his countenance and actions, formed a marked exception to those who composed the latter class of spectators, being neither idle, nor seemingly very ignorant.
The Last of the Mohicans By James Fenimore Cooper
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER 1
15  This is not a time for idle subtleties and false opinions," she answered; "but a moment when every duty should be equally considered.
The Last of the Mohicans By James Fenimore Cooper
Context  Highlight   In CHAPTER 8
Example Sentence: (27 in 2 pages)
1  An idle youth, a needy age.
2  Death, old age, are words without a meaning, that pass by us like the idle air which we regard not.
3  Satan always finds work for idle hands.
4  It would be idle to argue further.
5  The devil finds work for idle hands to do.
6  If the devil finds a man idle, he'll set him to work.
7  A young man idle, an old man needy.
8  An idle brain is the devil's workshop.
9  Men are left idle when machines break down.
10  He did not idle away his entire vacation.
11  Half these factories now stand idle.
12  Time is life and when the idle man kills time,he kills himself.
13  Employees have been idle almost a month because of shortages.
14  An idle person is the devil's cusion.
15  An idle soul shall suffer hunger.