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Sep 14, 2023
This week’s theme
Words related to time

This week’s words
anachronistic
kairos
chiliad
epoch
isochronal

epoch
A still from the silent film Safety Last! (1923)
Image: Hal Roach / Wikimedia

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

epoch

PRONUNCIATION:
(EP-uhk, EE-pok)

MEANING:
noun: A distinctive time period in history.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin epocha, from Greek epoche (stoppage, pause), from epi- (upon) + ekhein (to stay or hold). Ultimately from the Indo-European root segh- (to hold), which also gave us hectic, scheme, scholar, cathect, and asseverate. Earliest documented use: 1614.

USAGE:
“Half a millennium from now, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will have become great engines of productivity.
Stranger things have happened. A millennium ago real output per person was significantly higher in China than in Britain. To predict that a European backwater would lead the world into the most transformative economic epoch in history would have seemed like madness.”
Hitting the Big Time; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 20, 2019.

See more usage examples of epoch in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist (14 Sep 1917-1986)

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