timeout

UK/ˈtaɪm.aʊt/US/ˈtaɪm.aʊt/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,582 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: timeouts

A timeout is a short period apart, used to calm a child. Give her a timeout, a five-minute timeout, put him in timeout.

The idea is removal from attention rather than punishment, and the usual advice is about a minute per year of age. In sport a timeout is a break a team may call, and in computing a timeout is a wait that has run out of patience.

Definitions of timeout

1nountimeoutA short period apart, used to calm a child.B2+
“When he hit his sister, his mother gave him a five-minute timeout on the stairs.”

timeout is a break.

Where it comes from

Time plus out, American, from the sporting sense of a break in play.

From time + out.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Babies & Growing Up

Practise this word

timeout in the wild

If, due to a hardware fault or program error, the computer fails to restart the watchdog, the timer will elapse and generate a timeout signal.
Watchdog timer
In sports, a time-out (or timeout) is a halt in the play.
Time-out (sport)
Time-outs are usually called by coaches or players, although for some sports, TV timeouts are called to allow media to air commercial breaks.
Time-out (sport)
Interrupt, reset, and timeout logic are also specified.
MBus (SPARC)
A team wishing to do so would wait to snap the ball until one second is left on the play clock, or take a timeout.
Play clock

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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