Words / M / Business

mothball

verb/ˈmɒθbɔːl/

B2CEFR level
55/100Rarity: uncommon
TechnicalRegister

To suspend a project and preserve its assets so it can be revived later rather than scrapped outright.

Funding dried up, so we're mothballing the platform, not deleting it, in case next year's budget revives it.

Similar: shelve, suspend

Topic: Project management in Business English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More business words: Project management