say it: hez-uh-TAY-shuhn
hesitation is a noun meaning "indecision in speech or action". It carries 3 recorded senses.
indecision in speech or action
a certain degree of unwillingness
“a reluctance to commit himself”
“his hesitancy revealed his basic indisposition”
“after some hesitation he agreed”
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for hesitation come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.