Procrastinate

//pɹəʊˈkɹæs.tɪ.neɪt// verb

verb ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To delay taking action; to wait until later. intransitive

    "He procrastinated until the last minute and had to stay up all night to finish."

  2. 2
    postpone doing what one should be doing wordnet
  3. 3
    To put off; to delay (something). transitive

    "Hence It became manifest to the publishers of Webster, that some device must be resorted to, to induce apathy in the publick mind, and thereby procrastinate the inevitable crisis which they foresaw was approaching, the expulsion of his elementary works from our primary schools."

  4. 4
    postpone or delay needlessly wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
delaydilly-dallystallabandonadjournavert

Example

More examples

"Tatoeba is a great way to procrastinate."

Etymology

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”).

Related phrases

carpe diem crasput offtomorrow never comes

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.