Other forms: paused, pauses, pausing
A pause is a short stop before things carry on. The gap before someone answers a hard question, the silence a speaker leaves after a good line, the button that freezes a film.
As a verb you pause before speaking, and you pause a video. The word is temporary by nature — what is paused is going to start again — and that is what separates it from a stop or an end. Something that gives you pause makes you stop and think twice; that is a set phrase and it takes no article. A project can be put on pause, meaning parked for now rather than cancelled. In music a pause mark over a note tells the player to hold it.
1nounpauseA short stop before something continues.
“There was a long pause before she answered.”
2verbhesitateTo stop for a moment before going on.
“He paused at the top of the stairs to catch his breath.”
3verbrecordingTo stop a recording, a machine or a plan for a while.
“She paused the film to answer the door.”
pause is a short break.
Also accepted in games: break
Ancient Greek παύω meant to stop, and παῦσις was the stopping itself. Latin borrowed it as pausa, Middle French kept it as pause, and English took it over with the spelling untouched. Where the Greek verb came from before that, nobody knows.
Ancient Greek
παῦσις
Latin
pausa
Middle French
pause
English, today
pause
From Middle French pause, from Latin pausa, from Ancient Greek παῦσις, from Ancient Greek παύω (“stop”), of uncertain origin. a doublet of pausa.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA