You can't delay the firing of the event, but you can delay your handling of the event.

Here's a quick example without jQuery or Prototype that will make it easier to understand.

var delay = function (elem, callback) {

    var timeout = null;

    elem.onmouseover = function() {

        // Set timeout to be a timer which will invoke callback after 1s

        timeout = setTimeout(callback, 1000);

    };



    elem.onmouseout = function() {

        // Clear any timers set to timeout

        clearTimeout(timeout);

    }

};





delay(document.getElementById('someelem'), function() {

    alert(Fired);

});