1 [V] to stop talking or doing sth for a short time before continuing:
Anita paused for a moment, then said: 'All right'. * The woman spoke almost without pausing for breath (= very quickly). * I paused at the door and looked back. * Pausing only to pull on a sweater, he ran out of the house.
2 [VN] to stop a tape, CD, etc. for a short time using the pause button:
She paused the video and went to answer the phone.
Part of speech: noun
1 ~ (in sth) a period of time during which sb stops talking or stops what they are doing:
There was a long pause before she answered. * David waited for a pause in the conversation so he could ask Joe his question. * After a brief pause, they continued climbing. * The rain fell without pause. -< BREAK
2 (especially BrE) (also fermata especially in AmE) (music) a sign (pause) over a note or a REST to show that it should be longer than usual
3 [U] (also pause button) a control that allows you to stop a TAPERECORDER, CD player, etc. for a short time:
Press pause to stop the tape.
IDIOMS
give (sb) pause (BrE also give )sb( pause for thought) (formal) to make sb think seriously about sth or hesitate before doing sth:
Popular resistance to the measures should give the government pause.
moreatPREGNANT
Rate this entry
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 pause is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is pause a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, pause is tagged as verb.
Does pause appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — pause 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.