procrastination
Procrastination is the habit of putting a task off until later, often until the deadline, even when the delay will cost something.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Definitions
- The habit or act of putting off a task until later, often until the last moment, even when the delay is likely to cause trouble.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - A single instance of such delay; a postponement of something that could be done now.
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Examples
- Weeks of procrastination left him writing the whole report in one night.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - Breaking a big job into small steps is a common remedy for procrastination.
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Usage
Procrastination belongs to psychology, education and self-help writing, and it carries a mild note of reproach that delay does not. In ordinary speech people are more likely to say they kept putting something off, and the noun appears when the pattern is being named as a habit. The verb procrastinate is common in conversation, the noun much less so, and the phrase procrastination station is a joke rather than a term.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)The noun is mostly uncountable: chronic procrastination, a habit of procrastination, the cost of procrastination. It takes the preposition over before the thing delayed, procrastination over paperwork, and it combines with academic and bedtime as modifiers naming the setting. A plural, procrastinations, barely occurs and shows up only with separate counted episodes.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Procrastination is not laziness. A lazy person does not want to act, whereas someone who procrastinates usually intends to act, thinks about the task constantly and still postpones starting it. Nor is every delay procrastination: deciding to wait for missing information is a judgement, not a failure of self-control. The label misfires when it is applied to any change of plan.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Word forms
Regular forms according to English morphology (editorial description).
word forms
| przypadek | forma |
|---|---|
| singular | procrastination |
| plural | procrastinations |
Word forms: Editorial team
Collocations
- chronic procrastination
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - academic procrastination
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address) - a habit of procrastination
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Synonyms · Antonyms
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)source
Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Etymology
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W. W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., Oxford 1910, open sourceRelated words
- procrastinate , verb
- procrastinator , agent noun
Related entries
Questions and answers
What does procrastination mean?
Procrastination is delay of a particular kind: the person keeps postponing what they mean to do, usually until the deadline is close, and knows the postponement will cost them. The countable use, for one such episode, exists but is far less common than the uncountable one.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Is procrastination the same as laziness?
No. Laziness is a lack of willingness to act, while procrastination is a delay by someone who does want to act and often feels bad about not acting. The distinguishing mark is the intention: the person who procrastinates keeps the task in mind, may plan it in detail, and still does something easier instead.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Is procrastination countable?
As a habit it is uncountable: chronic procrastination, a tendency towards procrastination. A single episode can be counted, so procrastinations is possible, but the plural is rare and sounds clinical. In most writing the singular covers both the habit and the general behaviour, and an article is used only with a modifier.
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Editorial team (in-house source, no external address)Where does the word procrastination come from?
Cotgrave glossed the French procrastination simply as a delay, and the French noun goes back to Latin procrastinatio. The Latin verb procrastinare meant to put something off until the morrow: pro carried the sense of forward and hence away, and crastinus meant belonging to tomorrow, from cras, tomorrow. Skeat cites the verb in Shakespeare.