Dilatory
[DIL-ə-tohr-ee]
Part of speech: adjective
Origin: Latin, 15th century
1.
Intending to cause delay
2.
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."
