Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of gathering wool: usually applied figuratively to the indulgence of idle fancies or to any foolish or fruitless pursuit. The allusion is probably to the practice of gathering the tufts of wool to be found on bushes and hedges, necessitating much wandering to little purpose.
Wiktionary
- n. Gathering fragments of wool torn from sheep by bushes, etc.
- n. Indulging in idle fancies or daydreams.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Indulging in a vagrant or idle exercise of the imagination; roaming upon a fruitless quest; idly fanciful.
- n. Indulgence in idle imagination; a foolish or useless pursuit or design.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an idle indulgence in fantasy
- adj. dreamy in mood or nature
Examples
“Perpetual regret well describes the mood of the speakers in "Great House," and at times their stories recede into sloughs of forlorn woolgathering.”
“Like woolgathering and other empty pursuits, wistful might-have-beens had no place in my mind.”
“People my age or not too much younger may remember times as a child -- and even later -- when they stared aimlessly at sunlight playing on trees, or lay on their backs looking up at clouds or otherwise engaged in that hopelessly antediluvian activity -- woolgathering.”
The Huffington Post: Stanton Peele: Solitude: Alone or on the iPhone
“ But my publisher was a benighted occupant of that quotidian realm where these things have been forgotten; all he and anyone else cares about these days isrelevantfacts, not the useless trivia I had accumulated over a lifetime of woolgathering.”
“Idea sessions can easily dissolve into wandering and woolgathering.”
“She snorted, angry at woolgathering, knowing that among the younger ones it would appear as senility.”
“A gentle buzzing at the base of his skull reminded him that his woolgathering was happening on company time.”
365 tomorrows » 2008 » February : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
“Just woolgathering, really wanted to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas, and may your miles be as happy as mine.”
“These two ur-WASP gentlemen were tossing around what might be the contents of the eventual anthology GREAT ESQUIRE FICTION, and it was sort of wonderful to watch them and then it was sort of excruciating, as there was a lot of fumbling around and opinions that never yielded any concrete result and pointless general woolgathering.”
An Amazon.com Books Blog featuring news, reviews, interviews and guest author blogs.
“I can speak with authority that I often went woolgathering over Alfric2s untimely death.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘woolgathering’.
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reams of dreams
imagine, muse, aspire, reverie, aisling, mette, sweven, hatch, fancy, Puck, Tangerine Dream, Eingana and 30 more...
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My favorites
foible, sidereal, amygdala, woodnote, cogitate, silvern, ollalieberry, ramify, diaphanous, surreality, myopia, subcelestial and 75 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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slackagogo's Words
agelast, aggiornamento, zaftig, wowserism, vox barbara, verbigeration, tchotchke, tautology, sycophant, spoonerism, solipsism, sobriquet and 288 more...
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bilby's Words
pandemic, whirl, guffaw, ethereal, feisty, dunt, ephemeral, pule, flipergebet, prink, maunder, gammon and 1023 more...
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This week's words
hand-handled, crouch, hootchy-kootchy, gloriole, glory hole, metempsychosis, doctrinaire, transmigration, celestial, treetop, luxuriant, physic and 102 more...
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elizacole's Words
isomorphic, endemic, tmesis, fillip, antedate, avoirdupois, jeremiad, hypnagogic, antediluvian, fuck, reification, raconteur and 251 more...
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Favorite Verbs and Verb Forms
Culling my main Favorites list, and noticing how few of my favorite words are verbs. I'll have to work on that...
stupefy, eschew, gurgle, affianced, imbue, disconcerting, schlep, begrimed, wizened, woolgathering, lounge, flank and 94 more...
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Noah's Park
Hello, and Welcome™! Come and visit our most diverse land of our Animalesque™ adventures. Here at Noah's Park™ we have Virtually All You'd Ever Want To See™. An experience that is related to ani...
sheep's eyes, doe-eyed, cat-eyed, bug-eyed, cat's paw, black swan, leapfrog, menagerie, cold turkey, card shark, snail's pace, bull's eye and 362 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Odd-Ball
Just plain fun to say and wonder about their origins.
rapscallion, ramahanukwanzmas, cockamamie, nincompoop, hemidemisemiquaver, antiinterdenomina..., cattywampus, ragamuffin, tatterdemalion, blunderbuss, brobdingnagian, tintinnabulation and 127 more...
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Kaichi's Wordie Darlings, or I'm a Lo...
persnickety, discombobulated, braggadoccio, anthropomorphous, antelucan, confluxible, anomalous, poseur, gallivant, poppycock, falderal, gewgaw and 705 more...
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Probe~ation
An obnoxious and ridiculous madlib list where verbish '-ing' words fill in the blank wherein the blank is a call for a beating.
For example:
"You're ________in' for a brus...searching, looking, hunting, seeking, questing, exploring, asking, inquiring, snooping, poking, probing, scouting and 262 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, W
washboard, winterbourne, winze, wirble, waterway, windrow, winceyette, waft, whiffletree, wheelbarrow, whicker, wacky and 170 more...
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arnon's Words
treatise, enthrall, nimble, hinder, serene, transhumanism, meliorism, denote, apropos, equivalence, valence, orthogonal and 156 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for woolgathering.
dmcleod0914 "He chivalrously covered my position as well as his own, so my woolgathering was only interrupted when it was my turn to serve; my team ducked warily out of the way everytime I as up"- Twilight, Stephanie Meyer, pg.51 Oct 27, 2010
chained_bear I love that this word we use synonymously for "lollygagging" comes from the actual practice of picking tufts of wool off of bushes where wandering sheep left them. I imagine if tasked with that job, one might do quite a bit of mental woolgathering as well. Cool word, cool history! Feb 13, 2007