temporize.
To deliberately act evasively or prolong a discussion in order to gain time or postpone a decision, sometimes so that a compromise can be reached or simply to make a conversation more temperate; to stall for time.
Meaning & usage
To deliberately act evasively or prolong a discussion in order to gain time or postpone a decision, sometimes so that a compromise can be reached or simply to make a conversation more temperate; to stall for time.
To discuss, to negotiate; to reach a compromise.
To apply a temporary piece of dental work that will later be removed.
To comply with the occasion or time; to humour, or yield to, current circumstances or opinion; also, to trim (“fluctuate between parties, so as to appear to favour each”).
To delay, especially until a more favourable time; to procrastinate.
To take temporary measures or actions to manage a situation without providing a definitive or permanent solution.
Where this word comes from
From Middle French temporiser (“to wait one's time, temporize”) + English -ize (suffix forming verbs). Temporiser is derived from Medieval Latin temporizāre, from Latin temporāre (“to delay, put off”) + -izāre (suffix forming the present active infinitive of verbs). Temporāre is derived from tempor-, the inflected stem of tempus (“age, time, period; season of the year; due, opportune, or proper time”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *temp-, *ten- (“to extend, stretch (in the sense of a stretch of time)”), or *temh₁- (“to cut (in the sense of a section of time)”)) + -āre. Compare temporalize.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.