student asking question

What does "buy time" mean?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

"Buy time" is an expression that means to do something in order to give another person more time to complete a task; to delay an event temporarily so as to have longer to improve one's own position. In this clip, the baby penguin stands tall against the petrel in order to protect the other chicks. By doing this, this penguin is possibly giving the other chicks more time to run away. This chick's actions ultimately allowed more time for the other penguin to protect them from the petrel. Ex: I need you to buy me some time. Ex: Her actions bought time for the police to arrive. Ex: I told the professor I was sick in order to buy some time. Now I can study more for the test.

Popular Q&As

04/18

Complete the expression with a quiz!