Word.ws English Dictionary

pressing pause

pressing pause is the present participle of press pause.

Meaning of press pause

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

Questions about pressing pause

What is pressing pause the present participle of?
Pressing pause is the present participle of press pause.

Words near pressing pause in the dictionary

  1. pressing on
  2. pressing one's luck
  3. pressing out
  4. pressing pad
  5. pressing pads
  6. pressing pause
  7. pressing the flesh
  8. pressing the panic button
  9. pressingly
  10. pressingness
  11. pressings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pressing pause (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “pressing pause.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pressing_pause. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.