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The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.
a. Casual romantic or sexual activity:"[The military campaigns] provided ample opportunity for dalliance with civilians and hence for the spread of sexually transmitted disease"(Mark Harrison).
b. A casual or brief romantic or sexual relationship:revealed his many dalliances in his memoirs.
2. A brief involvement or interest in something:a dalliance with socialism.
3. Frivolous spending of time; dawdling:passed the summer in idle dalliance.
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.