dawdle vs fall back

dawdle

verb
  • Chiefly followed by away: to spend (time) without haste or purpose. 

  • To spend time idly and unfruitfully; to waste time. 

  • To move or walk lackadaisically. 

noun
  • An act of spending time idly and unfruitfully; a dawdling. 

  • Synonym of dawdler (“a person who dawdles or idles”) 

  • An act of moving or walking lackadaisically, a dawdling; a leisurely or slow walk or other journey. 

fall back

verb
  • To retreat. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see fall, back. 

  • To fail to fulfill a promise or purpose. 

How often have the words dawdle and fall back occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )