The idiom stop the clock means to postpone or pause a deadline and it can also refer to pausing a timed activity such as in sports or imply urgency or even a critical moment.
In legal contexts stop the clock means to exclude time related to processes that are outside of a departments control.
Stop the clock means to pause a timed activity, such as in sporting or even a legislative context, which can be either literally or even metaphorically.
Stop the clock can also refer to either pausing of a competition or a game to allow for a break or to resolve an issue.
Stop the clock can also refer to delaying of a deadline in a legal or parliamentary setting and sometimes allow for more time to negotiate or even finalize an agreement.
And in a more figurative sense, stopping the clock can also mean to temporarily halt an activity or a process and imply urgency or a critical moment in which every second counts.
In many types of sports, "stop the clock" is a literal instruction to halt the sports game clock due to a timeout or injury or other event which requires a pause in play of the game.
Stopping the clock or halting the game allows players to rest, coaches to strategize or even for officials to address an issue without the game continuing to run down the clock.
And for example in American football, the clock is stopped after a player goes out of bounds, after a score and for timeouts.
In legal settings and legislative settings, stopping the clock can be used to extend a deadline or to also allow for more time for debate or negotiation.
Stopping the clock in legal settings and legislative settings can be done literally by physically stopping of the clock or metaphorically by continuing business past the original deadline.
The practice of stopping the clock in legislative and legal settings is often controversial as it can also be seen as circumventing rules or deadlines and in some legal contexts, stopping the clock can also refer to suspending the statute of limitations and prevent cases from being dismissed due to the passage of time.
In a figurative use, stop the clock can also e used metaphorically to describe any situation in which a process or activity is temporarily paused or delayed and it often implies a sense of urgency or that the situation is at a critical point.
For example, "We had to stop the clock to resolve the issue before the deadline" which mean they had to pause their work to address a problem that required immediate attention.
And in some cases stop the clock can also be used to describe situations in which a person's beauty is so captivating that it seems to stop time.