loiter

Etymology

From Middle English loitren, from Middle Dutch loteren ("to shake, wag, wobble"; > modern Dutch leuteren (“to dawdle, ramble”)), ultimately connected with a frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *lūtaną (“to bend, stoop, cower, shrink from, decline”), see lout. Cognate with Dutch leuteren (“to dawdle”), Alemannic German lottern (“to wobble”), German Lotterbube (“rascal”). More at lout, little.

verb

1. To stand about without any aim or purpose; to stand about idly.
   For some reason, they discourage loitering outside the store, but encourage it inside.
2. To remain at a certain place instead of moving on.
   For on what does the whole vast and varied membership of the craft rest? It rests, of course, on the little boys whom you see any day loitering about on the far end of station platforms in every part of the British Isles, each one with his grubby notebook and blunt pencil, and his list of all the engines on the railway system, collecting their numbers and names in the vain hope that one day he will have collected them all. 1948 September and October, Canon Roger Lloyd, “The Art and Mystery of the Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 331
   [Sergio] Agüero, as usual, was loitering with intent and swung his left foot at the ball. The shot was going wide but [David] Silva was there to apply the decisive touch inside the six-yard area. 31 January 2015, Daniel Taylor, “David Silva seizes point for Manchester City as Chelsea are checked”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 2017-03-08
   Using the transect method, the counter had to maintain a general progress along the transect and was not able to loiter at one spot for too long. 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 4
3. (military, aviation) For an aircraft to remain in the air near a target.

noun

1. A standing or strolling about without any aim or purpose.
   Oh, Sir, we just got up in the morning and had a loiter and a pipe on the green; then we got our breakfasts; […] 1865, Edward Spooner, Parson and People, page 125