Plural of hesitation; multiple pauses, moments of uncertainty, or acts of delaying before deciding or acting.
Plural of 'hesitation,' which comes from Latin 'haesitatio,' derived from 'haesitare.' The English form was influenced by Old French, which mediated many Latin words into English after the Norman Conquest.
Hesitations are universal across human cultures, but languages divide them up differently—English separates 'hesitation' (the pause), 'hesitance' (the quality), and 'hesitancy' (the tendency), while some languages use just one word. This shows how English is unusually precise about the psychology of indecision.
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