mark time
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
mark time (third-person singular simple present marks time, present participle marking time, simple past and past participle marked time)
- (idiomatic, marching) To march in place, while still in step with the beat.
- 1821, Pierce Darrow, Winfield Scott, Scott's Militia Tactics: Comprising the Duty of Infantry, Light-infantry, and Riflemen; in Six Parts, page 161:
- When the colonel has given the signal for the music to beat time, he will give the caution for the movement as above; and the lieutenant colonel will immediately give the word to the right wing to mark time.
- 1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, H. T. Willetts, transl., August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 149:
- Next, they were ordered to converge on Bischofsburg. They had spent the morning marking time there.
- 1821, Pierce Darrow, Winfield Scott, Scott's Militia Tactics: Comprising the Duty of Infantry, Light-infantry, and Riflemen; in Six Parts, page 161:
- (by extension, figuratively) To stop making progress temporarily; to wait or stand still.
- 1916, Ring W. Lardner, “Three Kings and a Pair”, in The Saturday Evening Post:
- Monday noon I chased over to the Auditorium and they was only about eighty in line ahead o' me […] While I was markin' time I looked at the pitchers o' the different actors,
- 2005 September 8, Keith Spera, “Katrina Blues”, in LA Weekly:
- “If I can put money in their pockets and play some New Orleans music, that’s what I can do.” But he’s only marking time until he can return to New Orleans.
- 2009, Matthew Hall, The Coroner, Pan Macmillan, →ISBN:
- She had met plenty of lazy professionals in her time, people content to mark time until retirement, but none of them had still been athletic in their mid forties.
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Translations
to stop making progress
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See also
- bide one's time