What's the difference between 候 and 等? I've usually seen in my little Mandarin learning experience, that when people express wait, they usually use 等. However, I just noticed the following phrase in Sina Weibo:

请稍候...


I know 请 means please, and I looked up in my dictionary, that 稍 is a little and 候 is wait. So the sentence seems to express please wait a little..., which is fine in the context (I tried reloading the data, for your information).

So what's the difference between 等 and 候?
None. They are synonyms, although they also have separate different meanings.

稍等 = 稍候 = wait a minute.

等候 = 等 = 候, although 候 is rarely used as a single character with this meaning.