the.com/pause
the silence loud enough to change a sentence, a song, or a war
means A temporary stop or break in action, speech, or sound before continuing.
from From Latin 'pausa,' a stopping or halt, itself borrowed from Greek 'pausis,' meaning a ceasing, from 'pauein,' to stop or bring to an end. It traveled through Old French 'pause' before settling into English, carrying the same idea it always had: the deliberate held breath between one thing and the next.
- music
- The fermata tells players to hold a note indefinitely
- comedy
- Timing is mostly knowing when to say nothing
- tech origin
- Pause key dates to early IBM keyboards, now mostly vestigial
- brain
- A 0.5-second pause reads as thoughtful or hostile
- music again
- John Cage's 4'33 is pure intentional silence
pause button — first introduced on sony betamax vcrs in 1975, became standard on all video players
pregnant pause — dramatic silence technique used in rhetoric and performance, famously employed by churchill and jfk in speeches
pause feature — youtube pause functionality launched 2005, allows 70+ billion pauses daily across platform