1. brief periods when play is stopped in a sports game, usually requested by a team or called by officials
Usage: sports
2. disciplinary periods when a child must sit quietly away from activities as punishment
Usage: parenting; childcare
3. periods when a computer system or network connection stops responding or becomes unavailable
Usage: computing; technology

Examples

• The coach called two timeouts in the final quarter.
• Each team gets three timeouts per half in basketball.
• The server experienced multiple timeouts during peak hours.
• Parents often use timeouts to discipline young children.
• The network timeouts caused delays in data transmission.
• She gave her son a five-minute timeout for misbehaving.
• The application crashed due to database timeouts.