• (RP) IPA: /ˈsaɪdl/
• (GA) enPR: sīd-(ə)l, IPA: /ˈsaɪdəl/

sidle (sidles, present participle sidling; past and past participle sidled)

1. (ambitransitive, also, figuratively) To (cause something to) move#Verb|move sideways. [from late 17th c.]
2. (ambitransitive, also, figuratively) In the intransitive sense often followed by up: to (cause something to) advance#Verb|advance in a coy, furtive, or unobtrusive manner.
   • 1842, Charles Dickens, “Worcester. The Connecticut River. Hartford. New Haven. To New York.”, in American Notes for General Circulation. [...] In Two Volumes, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], OCLC 233677023 ↗, pages 176–177 ↗:

     There was one little prim old lady, of very smiling and good-humoured appearance, who came sidling up to me from the end of a long passage, [...]

   • 1934, William Butler Yeats, “[Supernatural Songs] He and She”, in The King of the Great Clock Tower, Commentaries and Poems, Dublin: The Cuala Press, OCLC 2201371 ↗; republished New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, May 1935, OCLC 1380199 ↗, page 43 ↗:

     As the moon sidles up / Must she sidle up, / As trips the scared moon / Away must she trip, [...]

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855 ↗:

     At an early point in these exchanges I had started to sidle to the door, and I now sidled through it, rather like a diffident crab on some sandy beach trying to avoid the attentions of a child with a spade.

• side
• sideling, sidling
• sidelong
• sideward

• sideways
• sidewise
• siding (noun)
• sidlingly

• Russian: ходи́ть бо́ком

• French: se faufiler
• German: schleichen
• Russian: красться

sidle (plural sidles)

1. An act#Noun|act of sidling.
   1. A sideways movement.
   2. A furtive advance#Noun|advance.
      • 1855 July 3, Walt Whitman, “[Song of Myself]”, in Leaves of Grass, Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.: [James and Andrew Rome], OCLC 930780804 ↗, page 55 ↗:

        Listener up there! Here you … what have you to confide in me? / Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, / Talk honestly, for no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.