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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10

Dilatory

[DIL-ə-tohr-ee]Part of speech: adjective

Origin: latin, 15th century

Intending to cause delay
Wasting time or procrastinating

Examples of Dilatory in a sentence

His client was late, so the lawyer pulled out dilatory tactics to stall.
Cleaning his room was just a dilatory effort to avoid studying.

About Dilatory

Surely you’re familiar with procrastination. Maybe you’re even learning new words as a method of procrastination. Now you can feel good about your delays because you’ve learned a new adjective for these tricks — dilatory.

Did you Know?

You might think the definitions of "dilatory" and "delay" are similar, but there’s actually no etymological relation between the two. Instead, "dilatory" can be traced to the Latin "dilatorius," meaning "extending or putting off time."