DILATORY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Dilatory

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/dˈɪlətˌɔri/ Listen

adjective

Dilatory adj.

Inclined to defer or put off what ought to be done at once; given the procrastination; delaying; procrastinating; loitering; as, a dilatory servant.

Marked by procrastination or delay; tardy; slow; sluggish; said of actions or measures. "Alva, as usual, brought his dilatory policy to bear upon his adversary."

Dilatory plea (Law), a plea designed to create delay in the trial of a cause, generally founded upon some matter not connected with the merits of the case.

Synonyms: Slow; delaying; sluggish; inactive; loitering; behindhand; backward; procrastinating. See Slow.

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Etymology of 'Dilatory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Dilatory" Quotes from Famous Books

... music in his veins, a blindness suddenly stole into his sight, and in deep agitation he got up, opened the window, and looked out into the night. For long he stood gazing into the quiet street, and watched a daughter of the night, with dilatory steps and neglected mien, go up towards the more frequented quarter of Piccadilly. Life was grim in so much of it, futile in more, feeble at the best, foolish in the light of a single generation or a single century or a thousand years. It was ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... while to insert here this note on the philosophy of sight-seeing, however dilatory or disproportionate it may seem. For I am particularly and positively convinced that unless these things can somehow or other be seen in the right historical perspective and philosophical proportion, they are not worth seeing at all. ...

— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... proceedings began to grow slow, was directed entirely at the dilatory Three Pointers. They hooted the Three Pointers. They urged them to go home and tuck themselves up in bed. The spectators were mostly Irishmen, and it offended them to see what should have been a spirited fight so ...

— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... 'twill be the same story To-morrow, and the next more dilatory, For indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can, begin it! Only engage, and then the mind grows heated; Begin it, and the work ...

— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... to their tongues to reveal their sentiments more freely. They told me that it was their absolute design to take possession of the Ohio, and by G— they would do it; for that although they were sensible the English could raise two men for their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any undertaking. They pretend to have an undoubted right to the river from a discovery made by one La Salle sixty years ago, and the rise of this expedition is to prevent our settling on the river or the waters of it, as ...

— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

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