Verb

(en verb)

To delay movement or action until the arrival or occurrence of; to await. (Now generally superseded by "wait for".)

* Dryden

Awed with these words, in camps they still abide, / And wait with longing looks their promised guide.

* 1992 , (Hilary Mantel), A Place of Greater Safety , Harper Perennial 2007, p. 30:

The Court had assembled, to wait events, in the huge antechamber known as the Œil de Boeuf.

To delay movement or action until some event or time; to remain neglected or in readiness.

* (John Milton)

They also serve who only stand and wait .

* (John Dryden)

Haste, my dear father; 'tis no time to wait .

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait .}}

(US) To wait tables; to serve customers in a restaurant or other eating establishment.

(obsolete) To attend on; to accompany; especially, to attend with ceremony or respect.

* Dryden

He chose a thousand horse, the flower of all / His warlike troops, to wait the funeral.

* Rowe

Remorse and heaviness of heart shall wait thee, / And everlasting anguish be thy portion.

(obsolete) To attend as a consequence; to follow upon; to accompany.

(obsolete) To defer or postpone (a meal).

to wait dinner