the.com/prolongation
Making something last longer, usually past the point anyone wanted it to.
means The act of stretching something out in time, extending its duration beyond where it would naturally have stopped.
from Straightforward Latin ancestry: 'prolongare' — 'pro' (forward) plus 'longus' (long) — literally 'to make long forward,' i.e. to lengthen. It passed through French into English in the 1400s–1500s, keeping its plain, mechanical sense of stretching duration, long before it picked up the sigh that now usually accompanies it.
- music sense
- a note held while the chord changes underneath it
- medical sense
- QT prolongation means your heartbeat is overstaying its welcome
- etymology
- from Latin prolongare, literally to make long forth
- everyday use
- meetings get prolonged, never shortened, by universal law