PROCRASTINATE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does procrastinate mean? 

• PROCRASTINATE (verb)
  The verb PROCRASTINATE has 2 senses:

1. postpone doing what one should be doing

2. postpone or delay needlessly

  Familiarity information: PROCRASTINATE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PROCRASTINATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they procrastinate    ... he / she / it procrastinates   
Past simple: procrastinated   
Past participle: procrastinated   
-ing form: procrastinating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Postpone doing what one should be doing

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Synonyms:

dilly-dally; dillydally; drag one's feet; drag one's heels; procrastinate; shillyshally; stall

Context example:

He did not want to write the letter and procrastinated for days

Hypernyms (to "procrastinate" is one way to...):

delay (act later than planned, scheduled, or required)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "procrastinate"):

procrastinate (postpone or delay needlessly)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Sentence example:

They procrastinate a long time

Derivation:

procrastination (the act of procrastinating; putting off or delaying or defering an action to a later time)

procrastinator (someone who postpones work (especially out of laziness or habitual carelessness))

Sense 2

Meaning:

Postpone or delay needlessly

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Context example:

He procrastinated the matter until it was almost too late

Hypernyms (to "procrastinate" is one way to...):

delay (act later than planned, scheduled, or required)

dilly-dally; dillydally; drag one's feet; drag one's heels; procrastinate; shillyshally; stall (postpone doing what one should be doing)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

procrastination (slowness as a consequence of not getting around to it)

 Context examples 

I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled—my departure, continually procrastinated.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mr. Weston, always alert when business was to be done, and as incapable of procrastinating any evil that was inevitable, as of foreseeing any that was doubtful, said, It was time to go; and the young man, though he might and did sigh, could not but agree, to take leave.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Yet while prize-courts procrastinated, or there was a chance of an appointment by showing their sunburned faces at the Admiralty, so long they would continue to pace with their quarter-deck strut down Whitehall, or to gather of an evening to discuss the events of the last war or the chances of the next at Fladong’s, in Oxford Street, which was reserved as entirely for the Navy as Slaughter’s was for the Army, or Ibbetson’s for the Church of England.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)