delay vs. postpone vs. defer vs. отложить

Дата публикации: Jul 29, 2016 4:37:32 PM

delay: related to slowness, procrastination, acting slowly, retarding

postpone: related to putting off, pushing back (for later)

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DELAY, PROCRASTINATE, LAG, LOITER, DAWDLE, DALLY, and DILLYDALLY mean, in common, to move or act slowly so that expected progress is not made or prospective work is left undone or unfinished.

DELAY suggests putting off <do not delay in sending for your copies. Fill out the attached form today -- Current History> <genuine success seemed as usual to delay and postpone itself -- Arnold Bennett> <to delay foolishly until all opportunity is past>

POSTPONE indicates a deferring, often until some set future time, although to postpone indefinitely means to cancel <I think that we had better postpone our look round the church until after lunch -- Compton Mackenzie> <let us postpone a final evaluation of Valla's treatise until after we have considered the handling of the selfsame problem by the English scholastic, Reginald Pecock -- G.C.Sellery>

If something will be pushed back in time by a few hours, it's delayed. For example, weather can delay the departure of a plane.

When something is pushed back to a specific date, days or even weeks later, it's postponed. A business meeting might be postponed because one of the key people got called out of town.

On the other hand, something like a product that is supposed to be released can be "delayed" (not postponed) for months.

If a scheduled event is delayed, it takes longer than anticipated for it to start, but it still takes place without a rescheduling.

If a scheduled event is postponed, it is canceled for the time originally scheduled, and it is rescheduled to take place at a later date.

Suppose you go to a concert. If it is delayed, you will continue to sit in your seat and wait for the concert to begin. If it is postponed, you will leave the concert hall and return on the day it is rescheduled.

There is considerable overlap, but there are distinctions.

Postpone is voluntary, an action initiated by someone who has the authority to delay an existing plan. For example, "Jack decided to postpone the meeting until tomorrow. The game was postponed due to rain."

You can use delay pretty much anywhere you use postpone, but delay doesn't carry the same voluntary connotation. "I was delayed because of heavy traffic." Also, delay can be a noun. "The delay was unforeseeable."

Defer has a suggestion of being de-prioritized. It is a much less common synonym for postpone. It also implies that the action was initiated by someone who has the authority to delay an existing plan, except that the postponement occurred due to something beyond that person's control. For instance, you could possibly say "Jack decided to defer the meeting to a later date because the scribe was called up for jury duty."

While defer and postpone overlap, I think defer and delay do not so much. In other words, you can use delay in all these examples, but defer only fits where postpone also works.

to defer usually includes the new date "The meeting was deferred to next Tuesday to postpone usually means that the new date will be set later "Because of the weather, the game was postponed, we will inform you of the new date."

When you postpone something, you inform other people that a pre-planned event will happen at a later time/day than expected. Postpone isn't very negative word, as it's done in a timely manner.

However, delay/defer carry more negative connotations, as these actions aren't necessarily pre-planned and carefully executed. You delay a meeting by being late when stuck in traffic. That's negative. However, you can carefully postpone a meeting a few days in advance, if for example you're sick.

Well, both words have different meaning. Delay means that whatever event was expected to happend at a certain time will not take place at that time but later, for mainly negative reasons, usually beyond control. Whereas Postpone (from Latin meaning "puttin off for a later time") usually implies that the event that was programmed for a certain time has been put off in behalf of somebody's best interest. Basically there are negative connotations attached to daley, same as there are positive connotation attached to postpone.

http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-postpone-and-vs-delay/

Suspend is a synonym of postpone.

As verbs the difference between suspend and postpone is that suspend is to halt something temporarily while postpone is to delay or put off an event, appointment etc.