hesitate

Other forms of hesitate

past tense

hesitated·

present participle

hesitating·

third person

hesitates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about hesitate

What does hesitate mean?

hesitate means "pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in hesitate?

hesitate has 3 syllables: hes-i-tate. The stress falls on "hes". In IPA it is /ˈhɛzəˌteɪt/.

What is another word for hesitate?

Close synonyms include waver, waffle, pause. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hesitate a common word?

hesitate is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with hesitate?

29 words rhyme with hesitate. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.