pause

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• intransitive verb To cease or suspend an action temporarily.
• intransitive verb To hesitate.
• intransitive verb To linger; tarry.
• intransitive verb To cease or suspend the action of temporarily; stop for an interim.
• noun A break, stop, or rest, often for a calculated purpose or effect.
• noun A delay or suspended reaction, as from uncertainty; a hesitation.
• noun Delay or hesitation.
• noun Reason for hesitation.
• noun Music A sign, such as a fermata, indicating that a note or rest is to be held.
• noun A break or rest in a line of poetry; a caesura.
• noun A control mechanism on an audio or video player that halts the playing of a recording and permits playing to be easily resumed from the same point.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A temporary stop or rest; a cessation or intermission of action or motion, as of speaking, singing, or playing.
• noun A cessation proceeding from doubt or uncertainty; hesitation; suspense.
• noun A break or rest in writing or speaking.
• noun In musical notation: A rest, or sign for silence. See rest.
• noun A fermata or hold, or indicating that a note is to be prolonged at the pleasure of the performer.
• noun Stopping-place; conclusion; ultimate point.
• noun In prosody, an interval in a succession of metrical times, corresponding to a time or times in the rhythm, but not represented by any syllable or syllables in the text.
• noun Synonyms Intermission, Rest, etc. See stop.
• To make a temporary stop or intermission; cease to speak or act for a time.
• To wait; tarry; forbear for a time.
• To stop for consideration or reflection; deliberate: sometimes with upon before the object of consideration or deliberation.
• To hesitate; hold back; be shy or reluctant.
• Reflexively, to repose one's self; hence, to stop; cease from action.
• To dwell; linger: with upon.
• Synonyms and To stay, delay, tarry.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation.
• noun Temporary inaction or waiting; hesitation; suspence; doubt.
• noun In speaking or reading aloud, a brief arrest or suspension of voice, to indicate the limits and relations of sentences and their parts.
• noun In writing and printing, a mark indicating the place and nature of an arrest of voice in reading; a punctuation point.
• noun A break or paragraph in writing.
• noun (Mus.) A hold. See 4th Hold, 7.
• intransitive verb To make a short stop; to cease for a time; to intermit speaking or acting; to stop; to wait; to rest.
• intransitive verb To be intermitted; to cease.
• intransitive verb To hesitate; to hold back; to delay.
• intransitive verb rare To stop in order to consider; hence, to consider; to reflect.
• intransitive verb to deliberate concerning.
• transitive verb rare To cause to stop or rest; -- used reflexively.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• verb transitive, intransitive To interrupt current work and do something else for a moment.
• noun A short time for relaxing and doing something else.
• noun Alternative spelling of Pause (“a button that pauses or resumes something”).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a time interval during which there is a temporary cessation of something
• noun temporary inactivity
• verb cease an action temporarily
• verb interrupt temporarily an activity before continuing