mark time

present singular third person marks time · participle present marking time · participle past marked time · past marked time

1. marchingTo march in place, while still in step with the beat.

   Next, they were ordered to converge on Bischofsburg. They had spent the morning marking time there.

   1989, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts, August 1914, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 149

   2 more examples

   When the colonel has given the signal for the music to beat time, he will give the caution for the movement as above; and the lieutenant colonel will immediately give the word to the right wing to mark time.

   1821, Pierce Darrow, Winfield Scott, Scott's Militia Tactics […] , page 161

   […] the drum line is a section that needs considerable time to rehearse on its own. […] Always have members stand at attention, in a formation that makes senses […] and reflects formations/configurations actually encourted in the show […], and have them mark time while rehearsing.

   2019, Gary D. Cook, chapter 9, in Teaching Percussion, enchanced third edition, Cengage Learning, →ISBN, page 346

2. broadlyfigurativelyTo stop making progress temporarily; to wait or stand still.

   She had met plenty of lazy professionals in her time, people content to mark time until retirement, but none of them had still been athletic in their mid forties.

   2009, Matthew Hall, The Coroner, Pan Macmillan, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   Monday noon I chased over to the Auditorium and they was only about eighty in line ahead o' me[…] While I was markin' time I looked at the pitchers o' the different actors,

   1916, Ring W. Lardner, “Three Kings and a Pair”, in The Saturday Evening Post

   “If I can put money in their pockets and play some New Orleans music, that’s what I can do.” But he’s only marking time until he can return to New Orleans.

   2005 September 8, Keith Spera, “Katrina Blues”, in LA Weekly

   Chelsea are in the bottom half of the Premier League, out of the Champions League and will not be in it next season while Lampard is now effectively marking time and filling the manager's office until a new occupant can be found.

   2023 April 18, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea Champions League exit: Where do 'disjointed, broken' Blues go from here?”, in BBC Sport