the.com/moratorium
Official permission to stop dealing with a problem while sounding responsible about it.
means A temporary halt to an activity or agreement, officially authorized rather than just avoided.
from From Latin 'morari,' to delay, via the legal Latin coinage 'moratorium' (a 19th-century legal term built like 'memorandum' or 'referendum'). It first named a legally authorized period during which debtors could delay paying what they owed — often invoked during financial crises — before broadening to cover any officially sanctioned pause, including, later, nuclear testing and whaling.
- origin
- Latin for delay, born in 1875 banking crises
- legal use
- authorized pause on debt or action, not cancellation
- sneaky trick
- makes indefinite postponement sound like discipline
- expiration problem
- moratoriums end, the original issue rarely does