Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness.
  • intransitive verb To postpone or delay needlessly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To put off till another day, or from day to day; delay; defer to a future time.
  • Synonyms To postpone, adjourn, defer, retard, protract, prolong.
  • To delay; be dilatory.

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

  • intransitive verb To delay; to be dilatory.
  • transitive verb To put off till to-morrow, or from day to day; to defer; to postpone; to delay.

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

  • verb intransitive To put off; to delay taking action; to wait until later.
  • verb transitive To put off; to delay (something).

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

  • verb postpone or delay needlessly
  • verb postpone doing what one should be doing

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin prōcrāstināre, prōcrāstināt- : prō-, forward; see pro– + crāstinus, of tomorrow (from crās, tomorrow).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin prōcrastinātum, past participle of prōcrastinō ("defer, put off till tomorrow"), from prō ("in favor of") + crāstinus ("of or belonging to tomorrow"), from crās ("tomorrow")

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Examples

Comments

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  • Something I am going to start to do tomorrow.

    February 21, 2008

  • I'm not procrastinating. I'm evaluating options so that I may arrive at a point where I can make the best possible decision.

    July 11, 2008

  • procrustinate: to have your time wasted by means of being tortured. See Procrustes.

    June 5, 2009

  • JM has not yet begun to procrastinate.

    July 17, 2011