delay

Pluraldelays

Formsdelays, delaying, delayed

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A period of time before something happens, or the act of holding something off or lingering without acting.

   The flight's delay stretched into several hours.

   Without delay, she signed the contract and mailed it back.

   Similarpostponement, holdup, wait, hesitation, deferral

   Note

   The general noun behind most of the other senses comes from Old French deslaier, built from des- and laier, "to leave." A delay is time in which something is left waiting. It is both countable and uncountable: two twenty minutes' delays, or simply too much delay. The fixed phrase without delay appears in the King James Bible of 1611 and in Macaulay in 1848.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To put something off until a later time; to defer it.

   The company delayed the product launch until spring.

   We may need to delay the meeting by a week.

   Similarpostpone, defer

   Oppositeadvance, expedite, hasten

   Note

   In this sense the timing is a choice: you delay a launch, a meeting or a decision. The King James Bible of 1611 has "my lord delayeth his coming." The verb always takes an object here and sits close to defer. When the cause is an outside force rather than a choice, the meaning shifts to hindering someone or something.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To slow, hinder, or temporarily stop something or someone.

   Heavy fog can delay flights across the region.

   The strike delayed shipments for nearly a week.

   Similarslow, hinder, impede, hamper, obstruct

   Oppositeexpedite, speed, accelerate, hasten

   Note

   Here the delay is imposed rather than chosen: something gets in the way of a person, a process or a delivery. The verb is most at home in the passive, with the obstacle in a by-phrase (mail delayed by a heavy fall of snow), or with the stalled process as subject, as in the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897), where a yacht's completion had been delayed. Compare the deliberate "put off" meaning, where someone decides to wait.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To wait, hesitate, or linger instead of proceeding.

   He delayed too long, and the offer expired.

   If you delay, the chance may slip away.

   Similarhesitate, wait, linger, procrastinate, dither

   Oppositehurry, hasten, act

   Note

   Without an object, the verb turns back on the person: to delay is to hold yourself back. Its most familiar use is the imperative Don't delay, a stock line of advertising urgency ("this special offer ends at midnight!"). Ingrid Michaelson turns the same phrase into a lyric in "Once Was Love" (2009). Hesitate and tarry are its close companions.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An audio effects unit that repeats a signal after a set, adjustable time gap, creating echo-like effects.

   The engineer used delay to thicken the vocal track.

   A short delay can make a single guitar sound like two.

   Note

   A musician's word for both the device and the sound it makes. Used as a countable noun, it names the unit: Dave Hunter's Guitar Amps and Effects For Dummies (2014) recalls the 8-bit sound of many early delays. Used as an uncountable noun, it names the effect, as in adding delay to a vocal. Controls for feedback and the wet/dry mix shape the result into echo, doubling or slapback.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   In timed chess, a span at the start of each move before the player's clock begins counting down; a less common time control than increment.

   The time control gave each player a three-second delay per move.

   Unlike increment, a delay does not add saved time to your clock.

   Note

   Chess clocks have two common ways of easing time pressure, and this is the rarer one. With a delay, the clock waits a fixed count at the start of each move before it deducts anything, and unused seconds are simply lost. Increment instead adds time after every completed move, so a quick player can build up spare time.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   In programming, an object that represents a result expected to become available later; a synonym of promise.

   The library wraps each request in a delay so the program can keep working.

   Code waits on the delay until the computation produces a result.

   Similarpromise

   Note

   Clojure's name for what is otherwise called a promise: an object that stands in for a value that is not ready yet. The program keeps running and collects the value once it resolves. The word is used countably, so you create a delay or wrap a computation in one. Elsewhere the same idea usually goes by promise or future.

Showing meanings only. Show all 10