procrastinate
- 01 C1 Advanced
to put off a specific task until a later time.
to delay a specific action or event. Transitive use is less common than the intransitive form but standard in formal contexts.
Simple“He decided to procrastinate his chores until the weekend.”
In context“The department tended to procrastinate the implementation of new safety protocols until forced by external audits.”
UsageTakes a direct object, often a gerund or a noun phrase.
Teacher's tipIn modern speech, the transitive use is quite rare; 'put off' or 'delay' is preferred for specific tasks.
“Additional issues can make it even harder for us to course-correct our brains when procrastinating about a deadline.”
First attested in 1548; from Latin prōcrastinātus, perfect passive participle of prōcrastinō (“defer, put off till tomorrow”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from prō- (“in favor of”) + crāstinus (“of or belonging to tomorrow”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix), from crās (“tomorrow”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.