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Allin

continue

verbnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//kənˈtɪn.juː//
  • Canada//kənˈtɪn.ju//
  • Ireland//kənˈtɪn.jʉu//
  • //kənˈtɪn juː//

To proceed with (doing an activity); to prolong (an activity).

verb

  1. 1

    To proceed with (doing an activity); to prolong (an activity).

    Shall I continue speaking, or will you just interrupt me again?

    Do you want me to continue to unload these?

    Firstly, I continue to base most species treatments on personally collected material, rather than on herbarium plants.

    Amid criticism that it was acting too slowly and indecisively in the face of disaster, TEPCO flooded three of its unstable reactors with water. It continues to do so while efforts continue towards long-term recovery.

  2. 2

    To make last; to prolong.

    Can you account him wise or discreet that would willingly have his health, and yet will do nothing that should procure or continue it?

  3. 3

    To retain (someone or something) in a given state, position, etc.

    […] dip the mouth of it within the second glass and remove your finger; continue it in that posture for a time, and it will unmingle the wine from the water […]

    The schools were very much the brainchild of Bertin, and although the latter was ousted from the post of Controller-General by Choiseul in 1763, he was continued by the king as a fifth secretary of state […].

  4. 4

    To remain in a given place or condition; to remain in connection with; to abide; to stay.

    Here to continue, and build up here / A growing empire.

    They continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat.

    He then passed by the fellow, who still continued in the posture in which he fell, and entered the room where Northerton, as he had heard, was confined.

  5. 5

    To resume.

    When will the concert continue?

  6. 6

    To adjourn, prorogue, put off.

    This meeting has been continued to the thirteenth of July.

  7. 7

    slangTo make a continuation bet.

Etymology

From Middle English continuen, from Old French continuer, from Latin continuāre. Displaced native Middle English thurghwonen, from Old English þurhwunian.

noun

  1. 1

    An option allowing the player to resume play after game over, when all lives have been lost, while retaining their progress.

    So if you died battling the green monster inside the cave—and you had run out of lives—maybe a continue would be available.

    Moreover, where three lives and a sparse availability of extra life-giving '1-Ups' marked the 1991 experience, the iPod player is offered an unlimited number of continues with which to progress through the gameworld.

Forms

plural
continues
past tense
continued
past participle
continued
present participle
continuing
third person singular
continues
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).