backburner
Not urgent now
Backburner, usually appearing as two words or hyphenated, refers to a state of reduced priority or temporary neglect.
The metaphor comes from cooking: pots on the back burners of a stove receive less attention than those in front.
To put something on the backburner means to postpone dealing with it while attending to more urgent matters.
As a verb, to backburner a project or issue is to deprioritize it: We had to backburner the expansion plans until funding came through.
Suspend or store
- tableHorizontal furniture surface
- delayEnforced waiting period
- postponeDelay to later time
- suspendHalt or hang temporarily
mothball · pigeonhole · sideline · bench · park · stall · holdover · adjourn
Cooking below boiling point
- dormantInactive but capable
- inactiveNot currently functioning
- idleWithout activity or purpose
- undevelopedNot fully formed
incubating · gestating · percolating · brewing · smoldering · potential · unrealized · nascent
Lacking immediate importance
- nonessentialNot required or needed
- peripheralExternal computer add-on
- minorScale with lowered third
- subordinateOne lower in rank
ancillary · inessential · trivial · unimportant · lesser · negligible · incidental · auxiliary
shelve
Suspend or store
suspend · mothball · pigeonhole · sideline · bench · park · stall · holdover · adjourn · deprioritize
simmering
Cooking below boiling point
undeveloped · incubating · gestating · percolating · brewing · smoldering · potential · unrealized · nascent · embryonic
low-priority
Lacking immediate importance
- nonessentialNot required or needed
- peripheralExternal computer add-on
- minorScale with lowered third
subordinate · ancillary · inessential · trivial · unimportant · lesser · negligible · incidental · auxiliary · dispensable
- low-prioritylow-priority, nonessential, noncritical, deferrable, secondary
- prioritypriority, top priority, high priority, low-priority, first priority
- delaysdelays, delay, delayed, postponement, postpone
- patience phraseswait, hold on, just a minute, one moment, one second
- unusedunused, idle, untouched, vacant, empty
- diminished importancedemotion, downgrade, deprecation, marginalization, trivialization
backburnerfront burner
Position of active priority
top priority · priority one · first priority · high priority · urgent matter
backburnerfront and center
Prominent central position
center stage · spotlight · in the spotlight · front of mind · forefront
backburning, backburners, backburn, backburnering, backburnered, backburns