postponement

American  

[pohst-pohn-muhnt, pohs-] / poʊstˈpoʊn mənt, poʊs- /

noun

• postponements
  plural

1. the act of putting something off to a later time; deferral.

   Taking your sick or injured pet to the veterinarian should be prompt, as any postponement can lead to ongoing medical issues.

2. the act of placing a thing below something else in importance or after something else in sequence (now used most often in grammar).

   Historically, inheritance laws tended toward a postponement of the claims of female kin to those of male kin.

   In English, the end position in a sentence is normally reserved for the key point, so postponement of an element is a way of emphasizing it.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• nonpostponement
  noun
• self-postponement
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• postponements
  plural

Etymology

Origin of postponement

postpone ( def. ) + -ment ( def. )

Explanation

When you delay something until a later time or date, that's a postponement. If a trial lawyer doesn't have all the information she needs, she may ask the judge for a postponement until the following week. A postponement can also be called a deferral or a stay, and it means rescheduling something for later. You can request a postponement of your chemistry test, but there's no guarantee you'll get it. When a baseball game or tennis match gets rained out, the teams agree on a postponement, starting over at the earliest opportunity. Postponement has a Latin root, postponere, "put after, neglect, or postpone."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

postponement postponements

Those hopes will have to wait, as organizers announced the cancellation and postponement of the festival on Friday, including its main show Aug. 22-23 on Dockweiler Beach.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2026

The Board of British Deputies of Jews had called the postponement "highly regrettable" and said it was working with the museum to reschedule the event.

From BBC ● May 28, 2026

Both major oil benchmarks rose Monday and US stock markets closed mixed while investors digested shifting developments in the Middle East, including Trump's announcement of an attack postponement.

From Barron's ● May 18, 2026

As injury and the postponement of races caused by the coronavirus pandemic left Sawe struggling to make a living through running, his uncle, Uganda's 800m record holder Abraham Chepkirwok, put him in touch.

From BBC ● Apr. 27, 2026

On the morning of March 14 counsels for the defense again stood before Judge Tate, there on this occasion to plead for a postponement of the trial, which was then eight days distant.

From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote

Gadd’s smash hit “Baby Reindeer” hadn’t premiered when the nine-month, five-round search for young Niall and Ruben started, with the success of Gadd’s Emmy-winning Netflix series contributing to various postponements on “Half Man.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2026

Three Conservative-led councils have asked for election postponements and Badenoch said they have their own electoral mandate, adding: "The party that I run is not a dictatorship."

From BBC ● Jan. 23, 2026

But there has been no trial - court records show a series of postponements, for reasons ranging from missing reports and incomplete investigations to unavailable judges and administrative delays.

From BBC ● Jan. 5, 2026

But these postponements mean that policymakers will not receive the latest government data on both fronts before their December 9-10 gathering.

From Barron's ● Nov. 21, 2025

The other war, the bloody one of twenty years, did not cause them as much damage as the corrosive war of eternal postponements.

From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Related Words

• adjournment
• freeze
• halt
• pause
• respite
• stay
• suspension