one moment

one moment

An expression asking someone to wait patiently for a short amount of time. A: "Hello? Is anybody there?" B: "One moment! I'm just getting dressed." A: "Yes, hello. May I speak to Mrs. Robertson?" B: "One moment please. I'll see if she's available."
See also: moment, one
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

One moment, please.

Please wait briefly. (A polite way of acknowledging that you noticed someone's request.) John: Can you help me? Clerk: One moment, please. I will be with you shortly. Bill (answering the phone): Hello? Bob: Hello. Can I speak to Tom? Bill: One moment, please, (handing phone to Tom) It's for you. Tom: Hello, this is Tom.
See also: one, please
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • One moment, please
  • (be) with you in a moment
  • (be) with you in a minute
  • With you in a minute
  • bide one's time, to
  • drop in to say hello
  • Who is this?
  • dressed to kill
  • dressed to the teeth
  • wrong number
References in periodicals archive
you will learn how to tap the power of just one moment to refresh your day and give you a whole new start, right now.
As a manager, I predict he will be a mixture - ranting and raving on the touchline one moment, totally caught up in the moment like Martin O'Neill - then at other times appearing as thoughtful and undemonstrative as the Dutch coach Marco van Basten.
One Moment More reveals a songwriter with one eye on the afterlife ("Come to Jesus," "Fighting For It All") and one still in the schoolyard ("Raggedy Ann," "It's Amazing").
There's one moment that I always get nostalgic for and that's--I'm very fond of the television version of The Odd Couple--New York about '68 or '69.
Wait one moment, they're different from anyone else--or are they?
Abayat is a self-styled godfather, who can be homicidal one moment and sweetly generous the next.
What Woo is able to bring to the screen is his unique vision of hyper-kinetic stunts and action, blistering the viewers' eyes with all manner of outrageous scenarios with a camera and plotting which never sits still for one moment. Although this film is void of surprises in terms of character and storyline, you won't get bored watching it.
Every five years, UCG celebrates its anniversary with a secret, all-expenses paid trip for employees and their guests, who don't know where they're going from one moment to the next.
Steinberg's vital intuition was to recognize that the difficulty in pinpointing the instant arises from the fact that the painting includes not one moment, but several.
One moment you'll be fine, the next incredibly sad, the next almost numb and robotic, and then angry.
With so many reverends as willing court chaplains, folding hands in prayer one moment and clapping them for the warrior President the next, church and state came together once again.
The focus of these fears in a particular time period -- heresy at one moment, destruction of families at another, etc.
As a Canadian and as a Catholic, I do not for one moment wish to impose my moral code on anyone, nor do I wish to deny any woman the "right" to choose to have an abortion, but by the same token I should not be denied the right to refuse to pay or permit any portion of my tax dollars to pay for any expenses related to therapeutic abortions.
Discussion was often animated, but there was only one moment when I feared that some of us might come to blows.
A few of the interviewers comment on how in their interviews Wideman is likewise fully guarded at one moment and brightly open the next.