mark time

Verb

mark time (third-person singular simple present marks time, present participle marking time, simple past and past participle marked time)

1. (marching) To march in place, while still in step with the beat.
   • When the colonel has given the signal for the music to beat time, he will give the caution for the movement as above; and the lieutenant colonel will immediately give the word to the right wing to mark time.1821, Pierce Darrow, Winfield Scott, Scott's Militia Tactics […] , page 161
   • Next, they were ordered to converge on Bischofsburg. They had spent the morning marking time there.1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 149
2. (broadly, figuratively) To stop making progress temporarily; to wait or stand still.
   • Monday noon I chased over to the Auditorium and they was only about eighty in line ahead o' me[…] While I was markin' time I looked at the pitchers o' the different actors,1916, Ring W. Lardner, “Three Kings and a Pair”, in The Saturday Evening Post
   • “If I can put money in their pockets and play some New Orleans music, that’s what I can do.” But he’s only marking time until he can return to New Orleans.2005 September 8, Keith Spera, “Katrina Blues”, in LA Weekly