It's the word of the day for July 7th.

Today's word is procrastinate, spelled P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-E.

Procrastinate is a verb. To procrastinate is to be slow or late about doing something that should be done, or about doing or attending to things in general.

Here's the word used in a sentence from Forbes by Mark Travers.

Researchers found that individuals who tend to procrastinate often do so because they fear not meeting their

high standards or worry too much about failing. The study also showed that this fear of failure

and the habit of overgeneralizing failures, like thinking one mistake means you're a failure,

strongly connect perfectionism to procrastination.

We won't put off telling you about the origins of the word procrastinate.

It comes from the Latin prefix pro, meaning forward, and chastinous, meaning of tomorrow.

To procrastinate is to work or move slowly, so as to fall behind.

It implies blameworthy delay,

especially through laziness or apathy. English has other words with similar meetings,

such as defer and postpone, but none places the blame so directly on the person responsible for choosing a later time to do something. Procrastinate is also a malleable word.

English speakers have wasted no time creating clever variations, most of them delightfully self-explanatory.

Don't let coinages like procrastinate bake, procrastinate Netflix, and Procrasta Clean pass you by.

They may not meet our criteria for entry into the dictionary,

but their potentials for use are undeniable. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sakalowsky.

Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.