It's the word of the day for December 22nd.

Today's word is temporize, spelled T-E-M-P-O-R-I-Z-E.

Temporize is a verb. To temporize is to avoid making a decision or giving a definite answer

in order to have more time. Here's the word used in a sentence from the Atlantic by David from.

The question is, did you eat the last piece of pie? And the politician who ate the last

piece of pie doesn't want to say yes, because they might get in trouble.

Doesn't want to say no because that's an outright lie.

So they waver, they equivocate, they temporize, they put things in context, and they talk like a politician.

Temporize comes from the middle French word temporizet, which in turn likely traces back

via the medieval Latin word temporizare, meaning to delay, to the Latin noun tempus, meaning time.

Tempus is also the root of such words as tempo, contemporary, and temporal.

If you need to buy some time, you might resort to temporizing,

but you probably won't win admiration for doing so, as the word typically carries a negative connotation.

For instance, a political leader faced with a difficult issue might temporize by talking vaguely

about possible solutions without actually doing anything.

The point of such temporizing is to avoid taking definitive and possibly unpopular action

in hopes that the problem will somehow go away. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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