pause

1. 1.

   interrupt temporarily an activity before continuing

   “The speaker paused”

   Synonymshesitate

   Broaderdelay

   Narrowerhem and hawscruple
2. 2.

   cease an action temporarily

   “We pause for station identification”

   “let's break for lunch”

   Synonymsintermitbreak

   Broaderinterrupt

   Narrowerresttake fivetake ten

Other forms of pause

plural

pauses·

past tense

paused·

present participle

pausing·

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 pause

What does pause mean?

pause means "a time interval during which there is a temporary cessation of something". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in pause?

pause has 1 syllable: pause. In IPA it is /ˈpɔz/.

What is another word for pause?

Close synonyms include intermission, break, interruption, suspension, hesitate. 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 pause a common word?

pause 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 pause?

1 word rhymes with pause. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.