Dilatory

adjective

Tending to dawdle or be late
Causing a hold-up; meant to delay

Usage

Think back to your days in middle school: it's 2:52 on a Friday, and your History teacher is about to wrap up class. You just know he's gearing up to assign you a mound of homework, but you've got one last trick up your sleeve. Cautiously raising your hand and giving him a winsome smile, you ask with affected hopefulness for his take on the current election race. His face lights up with passion, and for the next few minutes he begins a whole new train of thought, digressing into his profoundest opinions on each candidate. Suddenly the bell rings, and the class rushes out before he can say a word about homework, the other students giving you subtle thumbs up for your cunningly dilatory tactics.

Dilatory is an adjective used to characterize people or things with a tendency to be late. This lateness is often understood to come about as a result of procrastination. It's a phenomenon we're all familiar with: we all have obligations we don't want to meet and things we don't want to do, and so we (consciously or not) tend to drag our feet to delay them as much as possible. You might be dilatory if you always wait until December 24th to do Christmas shopping, or if you miss your train because you just can't leave your morning crossword unfinished.

The use of dilatory usually implies a delaying of the inevitable. Since the term often brings to mind procrastination or being late for important events, it is often viewed negatively. Although dilatory does not implicitly supply a reason for one's lateness, it is sometimes casually used as a synonym for traits like "lazy," "distracted," or "unprepared." However, one can also be dilatory not through any conscious act or reluctance to do something, but simply by moving at an extremely slow pace. Take the humble and dilatory snail, inching along at his leisure: although there's nothing he's reluctant to get to (one assumes, anyway), it would probably be unwise to count on him to deliver time-sensitive information.

A secondary usage of dilatory refers to actions and events that cause or are meant to cause a delay. Like a flat tire at a busy intersection, something that is dilatory in this sense tends to clog up the whole works, preventing everything from moving towards an expected goal. While they can often be inconvenient for those who are ready to move forward, not everything dilatory is bad - every parent of young children who's taken a little longer in the bathroom than necessary will tell you that sometimes you just need a minute. Something said or done to be dilatory is often an effective evasion, perhaps a method of stalling while you're waiting for something to happen or just trying to come up with the right thing to say.

Example: The dilatory cashier moved so slowly that the line reached halfway around the store.

Example: The stretch of quicksand proved a dilatory force to the naïve explorers.

Example: The judge found Robert to be engaging in egregiously dilatory tactics to delay the proceedings and hence held him in contempt of court.

Origin

Like many of our favorite English words, dilatory comes to us from Latin. One of its earliest ancestors was the Latin term dilatus, which is the equivalent of the English adjectival application of "delayed" (think, "the delayed train caused headaches among commuters"). This in turn evolved into dilator, which literally translates to "one who procrastinates" (showing that putting things off is hardly a modern invention). After taking its sweet time in Late Latin, dilatory finally showed up in English during the fifteenth century.

Derivative Words

Dilatoriness: This noun describes the trait of being slow or prone to lateness, or the notion of postponement.

Example: After her shift ended, the cashier's choleric manager chastised her for her dilatoriness.

Dilatorily: This adverb characterizes an action as being related to dawdling or procrastination, or as meant to cause a delay.

Example: Despite her manager's complaints, the cashier continued to work dilatorily the next day.

In Literature

From Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Bennet the next morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line from him. His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, a most negligent and dilatory correspondent, but at such a time they had hoped for exertion.

Here, Austen uses dilatory to describe Mr. Bennet as a man who is always slow and untimely in answering letters - much like that annoying friend who'll take days to call you back.

From Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace:

I am not to blame that the Minister is vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities.

In this description, dilatory is used to characterize the Minister as a man who is always hesitant and procrastinating in making important decisions.

From Shakespeare's Othello:

Thou know'st we work by wit and not by witchcraft,
And wit depends on dilatory time.

If you are a programmer, a writer or any other knowledge-worker, you can pin this lament from Iago in Othello to your desk. It'll come in handy when you need to explain the time taken to finish a tedious project to your boss!

Mnemonic

Dilatory dilly-dallies

Comments

Given their similarities in spelling, it might be tempting to assume that dilatory is in some way related to the word dilate, which means "to widen." Despite its appearance, however, dilate actually has a different Latin root: it's based on latus, which means "wide" or "lengthy" (think of latitude).