In English, there are a lot of ways to ask someone to wait.

Let's go through a bunch of them.

The first one is obvious.

You can just say, "Wait" and someone usually will respond by waiting.

But you could also say, "Wait a second." or "Wait a minute."

And all of those would work interchangeably.

But there's more.

You could also say, "Hold on."

Or "Hold on a second."

Or "Hold a minute."

And all of those would also encourage someone to wait.

But there's more!

You could even say, "Hang on."

Or "Hang on a second."

Or "Hang on a minute."

And all of those would also encourage someone to wait.

Now as with a lot of things in English, in the spoken form, we use a few short forms.

And with waiting, it's really just the word "second".

We sometimes in spoken English say, "sec".

So you might say, "Wait a sec." or "Hold on a sec." or "Hang on a sec."

And all of those would mean the same thing as, "Hold on a second." or "Wait a second."

In addition, you could also say, "Whoa!" and that usually causes someone to stop right away.

And there is also another phrase.

You could say, "Not so fast." to ask someone to slow down.

"Not so fast, Bob, you're speaking too quickly."

"Not so fast. Not so fast there."

Another one, which isn't quite as familiar as the rest is the term, "Hold your horses."

And "Hold your horses."means wait just like all the other ones.

Well, that's a number of ways to ask someone to wait in English.

Bob the Canadian here.

Learn English with Bob the Canadian.

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