pause

A pause is a temporary cessation of motion, activity, or speech. It can occur spontaneously in ordinary life or be deliberate for effect, pacing, or clarification. It is also used as a term in various disciplines such as music, cinema, computing, and rhetoric.

In speech and language, pauses occur as silences between words or sentences and can carry pragmatic meaning, signaling boundaries, emphasis, hesitation, or turn-taking. They are measured in terms of duration and may be silent or filled with vocalized sounds (ums, aahs).

In music, a pause is represented by a rest, a duration that denotes silence for a specific length. Rest symbols indicate varying lengths; musicians observe rhythm and tempo during the pause, then resume.

In media playback and computing, the pause command halts audio or video streams or program execution. In operating systems and scripting, functions like pause or sleep suspend processes for a set time or until user input.

In performance and design, pauses are used for dramatic pacing or punctuation in dialogue, stage directions, or visual storytelling, and can influence audience perception and energy.