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Slowness; delay; sluggishness. Arbuthnot.

A retarding; hindrance; obstacle; impediment; delay; -- common in the phrase without let or hindrance, but elsewhere archaic. Keats. Consider whether your doings be to the let of your salvation or not. Latimer.

To delay; to loiter; to remain or wait long; to be slow or reluctant in parting or moving; to be slow in deciding; to be in suspense; to hesitate. Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind. Gray. Perhaps thou linger'st, in deep thoughts detained. Milton.

Delaying.

With delay; slowly; tediously.

To be slow in moving; to delay; to linger; to be dilatory; to spend time idly; to saunter; to lag behind. Sir John, you loiter here too long. Shak. If we have loitered, let us quicken our pace. Rogers.

ontaining some tender and delicate, though simple, thought. Whose artful strains have oft delayed The huddling brook to hear his madrigal. Milton.

Delay; esp., culpable delay; postponement.

A delaying tarrying; delay. [R.] Sir T. Browne.

A period during which an obligor has a legal right to delay meeting an obligation, esp. such a period granted, as to a bank, by a moratory law.

Of or pertaining to delay; esp., designating a law passed, as in a time of financial panic, to postpone or delay for a period the time at which notes, bills of exchange, and other obligations, shall mature or become due.

rom which cut nails are made. -- On the nail, in hand; on the spot; immediately; without delay or time of credit; as, to pay money on the nail. "You shall have ten thousand pounds on the nail." Beaconsfield. -- To hit the nail on the head, to hit most effectively; to do or say a thing in the right way.…

Immediately; without delay; at once; as, he was killed outright.

Due and more than due; delayed beyond the proper time of arrival or payment, etc.; as, an overdue vessel; an overdue note.

osition; hence, adoption; enactment; as, the passage of the bill to its third reading was delayed. "The passage of the Stamp Act." D. Hosack. The final question was then put upon its passage. Cushing. In passage, in passing; cursorily. "These . . . have been studied but in passage." Bacon. -- Middle passage, Northeast…

To hesitate; to hold back; to delay. [R.] Why doth the Jew pause Take thy forfeiture. Shak.

ng or relying upon one or more things as a cause why the suit should be either dismissed, delayed, or barred. In criminal practice, the plea is the defendant's formal answer to the indictment or information presented against him.

, as a carrier of dispatches, from place to place; hence, to ride rapidly, with as little delay as possible. -- To travel post, to travel, as a post does, by relays of horses, or by keeping one carriage to which fresh horses are attached at each stopping place.

defer to a future or later time; to put off; also, to cause to be deferred or put off; to delay; to adjourn; as, to postpone the consideration of a bill to the following day, or indefinitely. His praise postponed, and never to be paid. Cowper.

The act of postponing; a deferring, or putting off, to a future time; a temporary delay. Macaulay.