What does adjourning mean?
Adjourning is the present participle of the verb 'adjourn', meaning to bring a meeting, session, or legal proceeding to a temporary halt rather than ending it outright. When a body is adjourning, its business is suspended with the expectation that members will reconvene at a specified later time — or, if adjourned sine die, without any fixed date for return. The word carries a distinctly formal tone and appears most often in parliamentary, judicial, and organizational settings: legislatures adjourn for recesses, courts adjourn hearings, and committees adjourn debates. A secondary, more traditional sense describes a group breaking up and moving elsewhere once its business is done, as when members adjourn to a restaurant. Derived from Old French via the notion of setting a future day, the word neatly encodes its own meaning: an adjournment is always a promise of return, not a farewell.
verbThe present participle and gerund of 'adjourn': to suspend or postpone a meeting, session, or legal proceeding, either to a later time or indefinitely.
- To suspend a meeting, session, or proceeding temporarily, to be resumed at a stated time or place
- (Of a group) to break up and go elsewhere after concluding business
"After six hours of debate, the committee voted on adjourning until the following morning."
"The chair announced that the assembly would be adjourning for lunch before reconvening in the afternoon."
"Parliament is adjourning for the summer recess at the end of the week."
When you adjourn a meeting, you're literally telling it to come back 'to the day' — the word comes from the Old French phrase 'à jour', meaning to set a date for resuming.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of adjourning
Adjourn derives from the Old French verb 'ajourner', formed from the phrase 'a jour' — literally 'to the day' — meaning to fix a day for resuming proceedings. It entered English in the medieval period, initially in legal contexts, and has retained its formal character ever since. The root 'jour' traces back to Latin 'diurnus' (daily), making it cognate with words such as 'journal', 'journey', and 'sojourn'.
Word family
Usage notes
Formal register, used chiefly in parliamentary, legal, and corporate contexts. The second sense ('the committee then adjourned to the bar') is somewhat traditional and often slightly humorous in tone.
Don't confuse with
'Adjoining' means next to or attached to something (as in adjoining rooms), while 'adjourning' refers to suspending a meeting or session.