buy time
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Delay or postpone something to gain an advantage
Literally: purchase a period of time
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The appointment last week of company doctoring group Postern to work on an MTM recovery should help in buying time with the banks.
They are much used, for example, to buy time to think.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “buy time” mean?
Delay or postpone something to gain an advantage Literally: purchase a period of time
Is “buy time” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.