cunctation
UK/kʌŋkˈteɪʃən/
cunctation noun: delay, hesitation, procrastination.
Noun
cunctation (countable and uncountable, plural cunctations)
- Delay, hesitation, procrastination.
- And lest any man should think her intent was to unnestle ill neighbours, and not to aid good neighbours, or that she was readier to restore what was invaded by others than to render what was in her own hands; see if the time provided not a new occasion afterwards, when through their own division...a. 1603, Francis Bacon, Discourse in the Praise of Queen Elizabeth
- The swiftest animal conjoined with a heavy body implies that common moral, festina lente; and that celerity should always be contempered with cunctation.1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Folio Society, published 2007, page 428
Synonyms of cunctation
Forms of cunctation
| plural | cunctations |
|---|
Origin of cunctation
Borrowed from Latin cūnctātiō (“a delaying, tarrying”), from cūnctor (“linger, hesitate”).
Words formed from cunctation
Questions about cunctation
- What does cunctation mean?
- Cunctation means delay, hesitation, procrastination.
- What part of speech is cunctation?
- Cunctation is a noun.
- How do you pronounce cunctation?
- Cunctation is pronounced /kʌŋkˈteɪʃən/ (UK).
- What is the plural of cunctation?
- The plural of cunctation is cunctations.
Words near cunctation in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cunctation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cunctation.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cunctation.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cunctation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.