Word.ws English Dictionary

hit the pause button

hit the pause button verb: to pause some process; to make a temporary halt.

Verb

hit the pause button (third-person singular simple present hits the pause button, present participle hitting the pause button, simple past and past participle hit the pause button)

  1. (informal) To pause some process; to make a temporary halt.
    • She has called on the government to "urgently hit the pause button" and introduce a "low-cost, one-off travel authorisation" for dual nationals who have found their travel plans disrupted.2026 February 17, Sean Seddon, Angus Thompson, Bernadette McCague, "Dual nationals face scramble for UK passports as new rules come into force" (BBC News)...

Forms of hit the pause button

third-person singular presenthits the pause button
present participlehitting the pause button
past participlehit the pause button
pasthit the pause button

Questions about hit the pause button

What does hit the pause button mean?
Hit the pause button means to pause some process; to make a temporary halt.
What part of speech is hit the pause button?
Hit the pause button is a verb.
What is the past tense of hit the pause button?
The past tense of hit the pause button is hit the pause button.

Words near hit the pause button in the dictionary

  1. hit the jackpot
  2. hit the mark
  3. hit the nail on the head
  4. hit the net
  5. hit the pan
  6. hit the pause button
  7. hit the pavement
  8. hit the rack
  9. hit the road
  10. hit the rock
  11. hit the rocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hit the pause button (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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Cite this entry: “hit the pause button.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hit_the_pause_button. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.