time

• Time gentlemen please!

• Time stops for nobody. the ebb and flow of time
• Time is the fire in which we burn. - 1937, Delmore Schwartz, Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day:
• One of the most common truisms on Earth is the advice to value or at least not waste time. Why has it become so widespread? Every person eventually realizes that time is the most valuable resource on the planet. Not oil...

1. (uncountable) The feeling of the passage of events and their relative duration, as experienced by an individual.

   • Time flies when you're having fun.

2. (physics, usually uncountable) A dimension of spacetime with the opposite metric signature to space dimensions; the fourth dimension.

   • Both science-fiction writers and physicists have written about travel through time.
   • So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated – was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! - 1895 May 29, H[erbert]...
   • We all have a visceral understanding of what it means for the universe to have multiple space dimensions, since we live in a world in which we constantly deal with a plurality — three. But what would it mean to have...

3. (physics, uncountable) Change associated with the second law of thermodynamics; the physical and psychological result of increasing entropy.

   • Time slows down when you approach the speed of light.
   • Given the connection between increasing entropy and the arrow of time, does the Big Crunch mean that time would run backwards as soon as collapse began? - 1992, Roger Highfield, Peter Coveney, Arrow of Time, Ballantine...
   • Eventually time would also die because no processes would continue, no light would flow. - 2012, Robert Zwilling, Natural Sciences and Human Thought, Springer Science+Business Media, →ISBN, page 80:

4. (physics, uncountable, reductionist definition) The property of a system which allows it to have more than one distinct configuration.

   • An essential definition of time should entail neither speed nor direction, just change.

• More time is needed to complete the project.
• You had plenty of time, but you waited until the last minute.
• Are you finished yet? Time’s up!

1. (uncountable) A quantity of availability of duration.

2. (countable) A measurement of a quantity of time; a numerical or general indication of a length of progression.

   • a long time
   • Record the individual times for the processes in each batch.
   • Only your best time is compared with the other competitors.

3. (uncountable, slang) The serving of a prison sentence.

   • The judge leniently granted a sentence with no hard time.
   • He is not living at home because he is doing time.
   • Arrested on duty at Fort Richardson, both parents had worked hard at blaming the other for their son’s death, but Kate’s meticulous recording of the detail of the bruising found on the child’s body and the physical...

4. (countable) An experience.

   • We had a wonderful time at the party.

5. (countable) An era; (articulated, sometimes in the plural) the current era, the current state of affairs.

   • Roman times
   • the time of the dinosaurs
   • That’s the way things were in those times.

6. (uncountable with possessive) A person's youth or young adulthood, as opposed to the present day.

   • In my time, we respected our elders.

7. (only in singular, sports and figuratively) Time out; temporary, limited suspension of play.

• Excuse me, have you got the time?
• What time is it, do you guess? Ten o’clock?
• A computer keeps time using a clock battery.

1. (uncountable) The duration of time of a given day that has passed; the moment, as indicated by a clock or similar device.

2. (countable) A particular moment or hour; the appropriate moment or hour for something (especially with prepositional phrase or imperfect subjunctive).

   • it’s time for (you to go to) bed; it’s time to sleep; we must wait for the right time; it's time we were going
   • The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again; for, even after she had conquered her love for the Celebrity, the...
   • It is time the international community faced the reality: we have an unmanageable, unfair, distortionary global tax regime. - 2013 June 7, Joseph Stiglitz, “Globalisation is about taxes too”, in The Guardian Weekly,...

3. (countable) A numerical indication of a particular moment.

   • At what times do the trains arrive?
   • These times were erroneously converted between zones

4. (countable) An instance or occurrence.

   • one more time
   • When was the last time we went out? I don’t remember.
   • See you another time.

   Synonyms: instant juncture minute moment occasion point in time sith time

5. (UK, in public houses) Closing time.

   • Last call: it's almost time.

6. The hour of childbirth.

   • […]came well to Exeter; where ſhe intended to ſtay, till ſhe was deliver’d; for ſhe was within little more than one Month of her time;[…] - 1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, book VIII, in The History of the...

7. (with possessives) The end of someone’s life, conceived by the speaker as having been predestined.

   • It was his time.

• Let's synchronize our watches so we're not on different time.

• Your car runs three times faster than mine.
• That is four times as heavy as this.
• Canton is the regional primate city of Kuangtung. Its population of three million is ten times that of the second largest city, Shant'ou. - 1980, James Chan, “Modern Manufacturing Industries in Kuangtung”, in C. K....

• dance time; march time

1. (uncountable) Tempo; a measured rate of movement.

   • The musician keeps good time.
   • some few lines set unto a solemn time - 1619–1620, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The False One. A Tragedy.”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published...

2. (uncountable) Rhythmical division, meter.

   • common or triple time; time signature

3. (jazz) (uncountable) A straight rhythmic pattern, free from fills, breaks and other embellishments.

   • After the introduction, the drummer is to play time.

• the time of a verb
• Though we have, in the notes under the thirteenth rule of the Grammar, explained in general the principles, on which the time of a verb in the infinitive mood may be ascertained, and its form determined;[…] - 1823,...
• The participles of the future time active, and perfect passive, when joined with the verb esse, were sometimes used as indeclinable;[…] - 1829, Benjamin A. Gould, Adam’s Latin Grammar, Boston, page 153:

Synonyms: tense

• I used to pay for things but that was time ago. - 2019 September 15, “Wiley Flow” (track 12), in Heavy Is The Head, performed by Stormzy:
• Ats' mum is looking for him, says he ain't been back in time - 2022 March 18, Ronan Bennett, Gerry Jackson, Tyrone Rashard, Sagirah Gammon, 00:38:33 from the start, in Brady Hood, director, Top Boy(Good Morals) (4),...
• INCHEZ:Man this is long! We've been in here for time! - 2023 January 15, Layton Williams, 12:51 from the start, in Freddy Syborn, director, Bad Education(Prison) (4), episode 3 (TV), spoken by Inchez (Anthony J....

Synonyms: ages long

• I used a stopwatch to time myself running around the block.

• The President timed his speech badly, coinciding with the Super Bowl.
• The bomb was timed to explode at 9:20 p.m.
• There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things. - 1625, Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the chapter)”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna...

• With oar strokes timing to their song. - 1861, John Greenleaf Whittier, At Port Royal:

• Who overlooked the oars, and timed the stroke. - 1717, Joseph Addison, Metamorphoses:
• He was a thing of blood, whose every motion / Was timed with dying cries. - c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […]...