Other forms: lingering, lingered, lingers
To linger is to stay when you could have gone. The last guests linger in the hallway with their coats already on, still talking; the teacher lingers by the door after the bell.
Smells linger best of all - woodsmoke in a jumper, garlic on your fingers, the ghost of someone's perfume in a lift. So do doubts, memories and looks: a suspicion lingered, his eyes lingered on the photograph. You linger OVER something you are enjoying, as in linger over coffee, and you linger ON a subject you cannot leave alone. A lingering illness is one that drags on and will not finish. Do not use it for plain waiting: linger carries slowness and reluctance, and a sense that the thing should already be over.
1verblingerTo stay in a place longer than necessary, slow to leave.
“They lingered by the gate, unwilling to say goodbye.”
2verbpersistTo continue existing after the moment has passed, especially a smell, feeling or memory.
“The smell of woodsmoke lingered in her coat for days.”
3verbspendTo spend a long and pleasant time over something.
“We lingered over dessert until the restaurant emptied around us.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Linger comes from Middle English lengeren, a repeated-action form of lengen, 'to stay, dwell, tarry', from Old English lengan, 'to lengthen, delay, extend'. That runs back to Proto-Germanic *langijana and to the root behind the word long. To linger is to make something long.
Proto-Germanic
*langijaną
Proto-West Germanic
*langijan
Old English
lenġan — to lengthen, delay, extend
Middle English
lengeren
English, today
linger
Built from
From Middle English lengeren, frequentative of lengen (“to stay, dwell, tarry”), from Old English lenġan (“to lengthen, delay, extend”), from Proto-West Germanic langijan, from Proto-Germanic langijaną (compare West Frisian lingje (“to linger”), Dutch lengen, German längen, Icelandic lengja (“to lengthen”)), related to the root of long. Equivalent to linge or long + -er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA