EPOCH • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Epoch

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/ˈɛpək/ /ˈipək/ Listen

noun

Epoch n.

1.

A fixed point of time, established in history by the occurrence of some grand or remarkable event; a point of time marked by an event of great subsequent influence; as, the epoch of the creation; the birth of Christ was the epoch which gave rise to the Christian era. "In divers ages,... divers epochs of time were used." "Great epochs and crises in the kingdom of God." "The acquittal of the bishops was not the only event which makes the 30th of June, 1688, a great epoch in history." Note: Epochs mark the beginning of new historical periods, and dates are often numbered from them.

2.

A period of time, longer or shorter, remarkable for events of great subsequent influence; a memorable period; as, the epoch of maritime discovery, or of the Reformation. "So vast an epoch of time." "The influence of Chaucer continued to live even during the dreary interval which separates from one another two important epochs of our literary history."

3.

(Geol.) A division of time characterized by the prevalence of similar conditions of the earth; commonly a minor division or part of a period. "The long geological epoch which stored up the vast coal measures."

4.

(Astron.)

(a)

The date at which a planet or comet has a longitude or position.

(b)

An arbitrary fixed date, for which the elements used in computing the place of a planet, or other heavenly body, at any other date, are given; as, the epoch of Mars; lunar elements for the epoch March 1st, 1860.

Synonyms: Era; time; date; period; age. Epoch, Era. We speak of the era of the Reformation, when we think of it as a period, during which a new order of things prevailed; so also, the era of good feeling, etc. Had we been thinking of the time as marked by certain great events, or as a period in which great results were effected, we should have called the times when these events happened epochs, and the whole period an epoch. "The capture of Constantinople is an epoch in the history of Mahometanism; but the flight of Mahomet is its era."

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Etymology of 'Epoch'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Epoch" Quotes from Famous Books

... subsidence of northwestern India, Afghanistan, Western Asia, and, probably, much of Tibet. The shallow-water character of the deposits of the Tibetan Himalaya indicates, however, a coast line near this region. Volcanic materials, now poured out, foreshadow the incoming of the great mountain-building epoch of the Tertiary Era. The enormous mass of the Deccan traps, possessing a volume which has been estimated at as much as 6,000 cubic miles, was probably extruded over the Northern Peninsular region during ...

— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... jowl so heavy. These marks of the unimproved adult are present in all infants at birth. Lady Clara Vere de Vere's little bantling is in a sense not hers at all but the child of some ugly antique race; of a Palaeolithic mother, let us say, who lived before the last Glacial epoch and was not very much better- looking herself than an orang-utan. It is only when the bony and cartilaginous framework, with the muscular covering of the face, becomes modified, and the wrinkled brown visage of the ancient pigmy grows ...

— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... physicians; and above all by social conventions, current fashions, and popular maxims. Only in the rarest case is an exceptional man the monstrosity which, we are told, every Israelite was in the epoch of the Judges—a law ...

— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... not our crude modern refusal of "reality" in any lives but those of toil and privation. It is rather the sad vision of an entire social epoch—the eighteenth century; and the eighteenth century in Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile "simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature, since ...

— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... naval combats which took place in those ages, that we can hope to form a correct guess as to the size and construction of a ship, and the method of manoeuvring her. We are now coming to a very important epoch in naval matters, the reign of Edward the Third. 1327, when the mariner's compass was discovered, or rather became known in Europe, and cannon were ...

— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

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