(v. i.) To stop or pause respecting decision or action; to be in suspense or uncertainty as to a determination; as, he hesitated whether to accept the offer or not; men often hesitate in forming a judgment.
(v. i.) To stammer; to falter in speaking.
(v. t.) To utter with hesitation or to intimate by a reluctant manner.
Example Sentences:
(1) It appeared Dunaway and Warren Beatty had an envelope containing a card naming a previous award won by La La Land, prompting visible hesitation between the two veteran actors before Dunaway went ahead and named La La Land.
(2) Nocturia (OR 1.8) and hesitancy (OR 4.3) were found to be predictive of surgery for younger men (age range 49-55), while only nocturia (OR 2.4) was predictive among older men (age range 62-68).
(3) Maybe this will be increasing the frequency of patrols, or going to places that the Obama administration has been hesitant to go – such as actually undertaking a non-innocent passage military patrols within 12 miles of an artificial island.
(4) The standards committee report by a cross-party group of MPs said it "deplored" stings but would "not hesitate to act in such cases if wrongdoing had occurred".
(5) The Senate’s economic references committee accused Asic of missing or ignoring persistent signs of wrongdoing , characterising it as a “timid, hesitant regulator” that was too ready to uncritically accept assurances of a large institution that there were no grounds for intervention.
(6) April 16, 2014 The hesitancy – or unwillingness – of Ukrainian troops to use their weapons has produced multiple awkward confrontations with civilian crowds Wednesday, including one in Pchyolkino south of Kratamorsk, which seems still to be unresolved after an hours-long standoff.
(7) He "jumped without hesitation", said official sources quoted in the Daily Breeze.
(8) But the character – compounded of piercing sanity and existential despair, infinite hesitation and impulsive action, self-laceration and observant irony – is so multi-faceted, it is bound to coincide at some point with an actor’s particular gifts.
(9) The Clinton campaign manager also hesitated when asked if any of his staff had access to Sanders’ records, saying he was sure no one had “reached into Bernie Sanders’ data and extracted it in the way that the Bernie Sanders campaign did this week”.
(10) Their hesitations are focusing in on provisions to cut more than $800bn from the Medicaid budget by phasing out the expansion of the program that had brought healthcare coverage to an extra 11 million adult Americans.
(11) Photograph: Alamy While most politicians would have immediately sent for the drillers, Acosta hesitated.
(12) For instance; hesitant to go to a hot spring, or on a trip with friends (76%), hesitant to go to a clinic or a hospital for physical check-ups and common illness (74%), troublesome to wear special underwear (69%), inconvenient because ordinary clothes cannot be worn (56%), distressed when viewing own body (52%), unable to dress in thin clothes in hot summer season (50%), imbalance of the breasts (49%), inconvenient to participate in sports (47%).
(13) Few would hesitate to allow their data to be used in a project that could improve outcomes for everyone.
(14) But Fallon said that “ we would not hesitate ” to kill others whom the UK understands to represent active terrorist threats, all without disclosing the evidence justifying that designation or subjecting it to scrutiny.
(15) Fox himself has seemed a little hesitant on the few occasions he has answered questions about Werritty.
(16) The referring physician should not hesitate to ask for perioperative mortality statistics from the referral center.
(17) Ms Williams's name will already be familiar to many gay rights campaigners courtesy of a memorable speech on same-sex relationships, in which she applauded Jamaica's criminalisation of what her sect considers a curable aberration, a diagnosis she did not hesitate to apply to Tom Daly.
(18) Then Jake Connor, an 18-year-old who replaced Scott Grix for only his second senior appearance and looked admirably composed from the start, exploited some hesitant defence down Warrington's left to ground the ball in an Atkins tackle.
(19) A statement issued by the North Korean military warned that it would carry out "strong physical retaliations without hesitation if South Korean warmongers carry out reckless military provocations".
(20) Transsexuals who had not undergone surgery, although it had been offered to them providing they fulfilled the usual requirements, were classified into various subgroups, measured according to their attitude towards sex reassignment surgery: they were transsexuals with an unaltered wish for surgery, transsexuals who were ambivalent towards surgery (hesitating patients), and transsexuals who had relinquished their wish for surgery and lived in the initial gender role.
Scruple
Definition:
(n.) A weight of twenty grains; the third part of a dram.
(n.) Hence, a very small quantity; a particle.
(n.) Hesitation as to action from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience.
(v. i.) To be reluctant or to hesitate, as regards an action, on account of considerations of conscience or expedience.
(v. t.) To regard with suspicion; to hesitate at; to question.
(v. t.) To excite scruples in; to cause to scruple.
Example Sentences:
(1) Their mutual enmity toward the West would in the end triumph over any scruples of that nature, as we see graphically in Iraq today.
(2) "Since then there has been silence, as if, under the pressure of contemporary change, there was no more moral scruple and concern, no new substance to be spun.
(3) I am not going to tread on private (and public) grief in the case of Miliband, other than to say that, when saddled with a leader they regard as a loser, the Tories traditionally have no scruples in unseating the incumbent.
(4) A sensationalist and scruple-free press seems eager to collude in their “noble lie”: that a Middle Eastern militia, thriving on the utter ineptitude of its local adversaries, poses an “existential risk” to an island fortress that saw off Napoleon and Hitler .
(5) "The company has acted without scruples and without any compassion for the victims."
(6) Scruple also makes it necessary to point out that the gap between the Lib Dems and Labour is within the margin of polling error, so the Labour third place may not be definite.
(7) "Without consideration, scruples or respect, our family misfortune is being put on display and marketed," Ulrich Busch told Stern magazine's website .
(8) In this article, two cases are presented that illustrate that the principles underlying medical practice and religious scruples are often the same.
(9) (4) The extension of the instruments of traffic legislation to immediate measures by the police--preliminary or "mini" suspension of a person's driving license by resort to preventive rights by the police?--meets with constitutional or legal scruples.
(10) To claim the crown, should he trust Melisandre, whose mysterious powers and zero scruples about parricide could make him king?
(11) Part of the Ministry of Defence, but employing arms company executives as well as civil servants, Deso quickly learned to chase export orders without too many scruples.
(12) Colleagues have no scruples in the tactics they employ to silence female colleagues – "The leadership cuts our microphones off," she says – or through intimidation.
(13) It required the party's home affairs person to set aside any personal scruple and throw political red meat to the angry hang-'em-and-flog-'em lions in the conference hall.
(14) If they sell businesses that cause harm, or close them down, they argue that all that will happen is that someone with fewer scruples may just step into the space.
(15) To promote the selling of arms in Remembrance week suggests a man with either no scruples or very poor judgment.
(16) I didn't have time to deal with someone else's heartache or their moral scruples vis-a-vis ditching an apparently iron-clad prior engagement.
(17) Society can’t afford too many scruples about the privacy of those who provoke such suspicions.
(18) The face has a vague familiarity; Howard recalls that this depressed-looking figure is a lecturer in the English department, a man who, 10 years earlier, had produced two tolerably well known and acceptably reviewed novels, filled, as novels then were, with moral scruple and concern.
(19) But he also upset corporate social responsibility advocates by showing himself willing to throw former scruples and do deals with TNK investors just months after he had threatened to sue them.
(20) Although he had no scruples about violating the right to life, he was a fanatic about regulations.