1 [C] a period of time when sb/sth has to wait because of a problem that makes sth slow or late:
Commuters will face long delays on the roads today. * We apologize for the delay in answering your letter. * a delay of two hours / a two-hour delay * Increased congestion and traffic delays are expected.
2 [C,U] a situation in which sth does not happen when it should; the act of delaying:
There's no time for delay. * Report it to the police without delay (= immediately).
Part of speech: verb
1 to not do sth until a later time or to make sth happen at a later time:
[VN] The judge will delay his verdict until he receives medical reports on the offender. * She's suffering a delayed reaction (= a reaction that did not happen immediately) to the shock. * [V-ing] He delayed telling her the news, waiting for the right moment. * [V] Don't delay-call us today! * We can't delay much longer.
2 [VN] to make sb late or force them to do sth more slowly:
Thousands of commuters were delayed for over an hour. * The government is accused of using delaying tactics (= deliberately doing sth to delay a process, decision, etc.). * What could have delayed him?
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for delay is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is delay a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, delay is tagged as noun.
Does delay appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — delay appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
