ambiguity - What is the meaning of the expression "We can table this"?

This came up in an email discussion - we are arguing about the merits and demerits of a certain approach, and I mentioned what I thought was a drawback to a scheme. To that, my colleague replied : "Okay, we can table this, but I just want to clarify something..." after which he went on to elucidate his views.... Does that mean that the discussion is closed on this ? If so, did he mean to say "I agree to what you say, but I wasn't totally wrong either" or something similar, or is it the reverse ?

Answer

In American English, to table something means to postpone discussion on something. It might mean to postpone it indefinitely, but usually it just means that the discussion should be resumed at a later date. (As others have pointed out, in British English it means the exact opposite. Two countries divided by a common language, as someone said.)

Edit:

Etymonline notes:

table (v.) in parliamentary sense, 1718, originally "to lay on the (speaker's) table for discussion," from table (n.). But in U.S. political jargon it has the sense of "to postpone indefinitely" (1866). Related: Tabled; tabling.

That may be true for political jargon, but in every business meeting I've ever been involved with, to "table" something usually means the issue wasn't going to go away but that we were agreeing not to talk about it during the current meeting.