Putting something off or causing something to happen slower or later than originally planned.
From Old French 'delayer,' combining 'de-' (away) and 'laiier' (to leave). The modern sense of intentionally postponing developed over centuries as the word evolved in English legal and administrative contexts.
Psychologists discovered that humans are terrible at recognizing they're delaying—we create elaborate mental justifications for procrastination, which is why 'delaying' feels different from 'procrastinating' even though they mean almost the same thing!
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