- 1
To avoid giving a real answer or making a real decision, so that you can buy yourself more time. The person is not thinking hard about the problem — they are stalling: talking around the question, being vague on purpose, promising to look into it, agreeing with everyone, so that nothing has to be settled today. This is a formal word, mostly written, and you meet it most in writing about , business, and diplomacy. It carries mild : calling a leader's speech "temporizing" says they dodged. It is normally used with no object — "the government temporized for weeks" — so you do not temporize something. British writing usually spells it "temporise"; American writing uses "-ize". There is an older, rarer use meaning to fit in with whatever the times demand, but you can safely ignore it.
拖延、敷衍（用含糊答覆爭取時間，不正面表態；正式用語，帶貶意）
組成From Latin tempus, tempor- meaning "time" — the same piece that starts "temporary" — plus -ize, which turns it into a verb. So literally, "to do time": to play for time.
同家族的字
- temporaryfrom Latin tempus, time — lasting only a short time
- contemporarycon- (with) + tempus (time) — of the same time
- tempothrough Italian from the same Latin tempus; the speed, the timing, of music
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
temporizeverb/ˈtɛmpəɹaɪz/
- 1
To deliberately act evasively or prolong a discussion in order to gain time or postpone a decision, sometimes so that a compromise can be reached or simply to make a conversation more temperate; to stall for time.
- “There are more answers to that than you may think,” Chih temporized, because there were, but they could see that there was only one answer that really mattered to tigers.
- 2
To discuss, to negotiate; to reach a compromise.
- The Dolphin is too wilfull oppoſite, / And will not temporize with my intreaties: / He flatly ſaies, heell not lay downe his Armes.
- I ought to have temporized with this singular being, learned the motives of its interference, and availed myself of its succor, [...]
- 3
dentistrymedicinesciencesTo apply a temporary piece of dental work that will later be removed.
- This is especially true when we're faced with temporizing a patient who will ultimately receive veneer restorations.
- 4
archaicTo comply with the occasion or time; to humour, or yield to, current circumstances or opinion; also, to trim (“fluctuate between parties, so as to appear to favour each”).
- Yet ſeeking at the firſt to temporize, / She tries if that ſome ſhort impriſonment / would calme their heat; when that would not ſuffize, / Then to exile him ſhee muſt needes conſent: [...]
- Happy he, in that he is freed from the tumults of the world, hee ſeekes no honours, gapes after no preferment, flatters not, envies not, temporizeth not, but liues priuately, and well contented with his eſtate, [...]
- 5
obsoleteTo delay, especially until a more favourable time; to procrastinate.
- Pedro. Nay, if Cupid haue not ſpent all his quiuer in Venice, thou wilt quake for this ſhortly. / Bened[ick]. I looke for an earthquake too then. / Pedro. Well, you will temporize with the howres, [...]
- The Earle of Lincolne [John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln] deceiued of his hopes of the Countries concourſe vnto him (in which caſe he would haue temporized) and ſeeing the buſineſſe paſt Retraict, reſolued to make on where the King [Henry VII of England] was, and to giue him Battaile; [...]
- 6
medicinesciencesTo take temporary measures or actions to manage a situation without providing a definitive or permanent solution.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。