Wiktionary

procrastinate

English

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WOTD – 21 May 2007

Etymology

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Either back-formation from procrastination, or from Latin prōcrastinātum, past participle of prōcrastinō (“defer, put off till tomorrow”), from prō (“in favor of”) + crāstinus (“of or belonging to tomorrow”), from crās (“tomorrow”)

Pronunciation

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Verb

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procrastinate (third-person singular simple present procrastinates, present participle procrastinating, simple past and past participle procrastinated)

  1. (intransitive) To delay taking action; to wait until later.
    He procrastinated until the last minute and had to stay up all night to finish.
  2. (transitive) To put off; to delay (something).
    • 1816, John Pickering, A vocabulary; or, Collection of words and phrases, page 4:
      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.

Synonyms

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Antonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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Further reading

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Italian

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Etymology 1

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Verb

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procrastinate

  1. inflection of procrastinare:
    1. second-person plural present indicative
    2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

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Participle

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procrastinate f pl

  1. feminine plural of procrastinato

Latin

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Verb

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prōcrāstināte

  1. second-person plural present active imperative of prōcrāstinō

Spanish

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Verb

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procrastinate

  1. second-person singular voseo imperative of procrastinar combined with te
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