Qualities
Synonyms for idle
Synonyms for idle: light and unused. Every one of them is a hand audited pair from the Synonym Stack word bank, shown below in the sense it fits, in a real sentence, and beside the words that only look close.
The 2 synonyms for idle
- lightadjective, in the sense "silly or trivial"
- unusedadjective, in the sense "not in active use"
Each of these belongs to a different sense of idle, which is why the meaning beside them changes down the list.
silly or trivial
They passed the time with idle chatter about nothing.
The true synonym
light
Same sentence, swapped: They passed the time with light chatter about nothing.
Close but different
The game offers these three alongside the answer. They are close enough to tempt and wrong enough to be wrong, which is the whole design.
- jobless
- unused
- paralyzed
not in active use
The machinery sat idle during the strike.
The true synonym
unused
Same sentence, swapped: The machinery sat unused during the strike.
Close but different
These three are the other tiles the game puts on screen for this sense, and the note above says why the closest of them fails. None is a synonym for idle in the sentence quoted.
- jobless
- unfounded
- paralyzed
Where idle turns up in the game
idle is the word under test in two puzzles, spread across two difficulty tiers. It also sits on the board as one of the three wrong tiles in nine other puzzles, where the answer is a different word entirely.
4 of the 9 puzzles where idle is the trap
- lurchverb, Tier 1, Foothills. The answer there is jolt, in the sense "to move suddenly and unsteadily", and idle is one of the three tiles that lose.
- deadadjective, Tier 2, Treeline. The answer there is drained, in the sense "drained of electric charge", and idle is on the board beside it.
- deadadjective, Tier 2, Treeline. The answer there is numb, in the sense "not showing human feeling or sensitivity", and idle is on the board beside it.
- deliberateadjective, Tier 2, Treeline. The answer there is measured, in the sense "carefully thought out in advance", with idle sitting one tile away.
Play idle
The bank on this page is the bank the game plays from, so idle reaches you as a board rather than a definition: the sentence first, four tiles, and the meaning after you choose.
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The ring widens as it goes, from qualities at Treeline outward to the whole bank.
Why the near miss missed, in the game as well as here
Synonym Stack plays from this exact bank. idle carries 1 written reason line, and the game shows them the moment a round ends, whichever tile you tapped.