Word.ws English Dictionary

press pause

press pause verb: to temporarily stop a process.

Verb

press pause (third-person singular simple present presses pause, present participle pressing pause, simple past and past participle pressed pause)

  1. (informal, intransitive) To temporarily stop a process.
    • Chinese state media has pressed pause on the US-bashing, releasing a raft of commentaries extolling the merits of resetting relations and working on co-operation.2023 November 15, Tessa Wong, “Xi Jinping arrives in US as his Chinese Dream sputters”, in BBC

Forms of press pause

third-person singular presentpresses pause
present participlepressing pause
past participlepressed pause
pastpressed pause

Origin of press pause

By analogy with the "pause" button on a media player.

Questions about press pause

What does press pause mean?
Press pause means to temporarily stop a process.
What part of speech is press pause?
Press pause is a verb.
What is the past tense of press pause?
The past tense of press pause is pressed pause.

Words near press pause in the dictionary

  1. press out
  2. press pack
  3. press packs
  4. press pass
  5. press passes
  6. press pause
  7. press pool
  8. press pot
  9. press pots
  10. press proof
  11. press proofs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: press pause (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: “press pause.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/press_pause. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.