give pause


Cause one to hesitate, as in The high monthly installment payments gave me pause, or, as Shakespeare put it in Hamlet (3:1): “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come ... Must give us pause.” [c. 1600]

Words Nearby give pause

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

How to use give pause in a sentence

  • Something sufficiently interesting, at any rate, to give pause even to a critic in a hurry.

    Since Czanne | Clive Bell