A period of time in which a system or component remains in a given state.
"The machine's safety protocol requires it to dwell in its idle mode for five seconds before automatically restarting the cycle."
To live; to reside.
"They decided not to dwell on that crowded city and instead moved their family back to a quiet farmhouse in the countryside."
The word dwell comes from Middle English, where it originally meant to delay or remain. Its roots trace back through Old English and Proto-Germanic to a concept of whirling or blurring that eventually shifted to mean living somewhere.