160
votes
Accepted
How did English retain its non-Christian names of the week?
Background
When in ca. 100 CE Plutarch wrote a treatise entitled Why are the days named after the planets reckoned in a different order from the actual order?, it can be deduced that
in Rome the ...
- 28.2k
119
votes
Is it true that English has no future tense?
Short answer: Yes, of course English has future tense ... for everyone except the most technical, and for them it doesn't have a future tense because they define "have a tense" in a non-intuitive way. ...
- 72.1k
110
votes
Accepted
"Position" is to "space" as what word is to "time"?
A moment (in time), according to Collins Dictionary a moment is:
"a specific instant or point in time"
Attribution: "Definition of 'moment'." Moment Definition and Meaning | Collins English ...
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107
votes
Meaning of "16.8 hours a week"
There are 168 hours in a week (7 x 24). Thus 16.8 hours is a tenth of a week.
16.8 hours is 16 and 8/10 hours which is exactly 16 hours and 48 minutes.
As a night-shift worker myself, working in an ...
- 24.9k
83
votes
"Position" is to "space" as what word is to "time"?
Technically and even mathematically speaking, that would be an instant, which can be thought of as a more technical term for a moment. This is how Wikipedia defines it:
An instant is an ...
- 5,845
59
votes
Accepted
Is there a word that means “measure time”?
If you're measuring the time it takes a runner to run 100 meters, you are timing the runner, or clocking the runner.
From Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Clock: transitive verb 1a: to time with a ...
- 90.3k
47
votes
Meaning of "16.8 hours a week"
16.8 is 16 plus 8/10. As I come from England, my first instinct on seeing a "." is that it's a decimal separator. Being from Poland, I assume you would have had the same instinct had it been written "...
- 14.9k
47
votes
Is it true that English has no future tense?
Strictly speaking, no Germanic language has a future tense, only a present and a preterite. All others are analytic tenses compounded with various auxiliaries. Since the present tense simple in ...
- 28.2k
45
votes
"Position" is to "space" as what word is to "time"?
"Time"!
At least, that's the word we most often use for what you might call the "temporal coordinate" of an event, analogous to the position of an event being its "spatial coordinate". For example, ...
- 4,477
44
votes
Accepted
Idiom or phrase for expressing one's skill/talent has not decayed
He's still got it.
He hasn't lost his touch.
- 5,597
34
votes
How do I express a time point which is a decade ago, counting from another time point mentioned in a passage?
"xxx was almost impossible to use in researches until 2000s despite being invented a decade earlier."
Collins:
earlier
adverb [ADVERB with verb]
Earlier is used to refer to a point or ...
- 28.3k
33
votes
Accepted
How do I express a time point which is a decade ago, counting from another time point mentioned in a passage?
Using ago is ambiguous at best, and misleading at worst. (Because ago is naturally assumed to be relative to now, not the other date.)
You are free to give a specific date.
Or you can use some other ...
- 38.3k
30
votes
Is there a word for "timeless" that doesn't imply the passage of time?
The word atemporal means
independent of or unaffected by time.
(Merriam-Webster's definition)
- 90.3k
29
votes
Is there a word that means “measure time”?
To time conveys the meaning you want:
If you time an action or activity, you measure how long someone takes to do it or how long it lasts.
He timed each performance with a stop-watch.
(Collins ...
- 67.9k
27
votes
Accepted
How to write lengths of time in a short way with numbers
The W3 standard uses:
hh:mm:ss
For simple timestamp, with no seconds, try:
1h54m
or:
01h54m
Both are readily parsed by a computer due to the h and m and indicating the end of the numeric.
- 3,594
27
votes
"Position" is to "space" as what word is to "time"?
I'd suggest "Point in time"
"Point in time is sometimes useful, though. It may indicate that point refers to time instead of space—though context usually fills in the blank. And when it comes to ...
- 1,041
27
votes
Accepted
Time of day between morning and noon
There is indeed no word for it other than 'late morning' or similar. Also, 'lunchtime' would be more idiomatic than 'noon' for the period round midday (or, I suppose, 'dinnertime' for those who always ...
- 28.1k
25
votes
Time of day between morning and noon
In everyday speech the time of the day you are referring to is called:
midmorning or (mid-morning):
the middle of the morning; the time centering around the midpoint between early morning and ...
- 67.9k
22
votes
What is the meaning of "later on the day"
"Later on the day" is non-idiomatic in my opinion. I would assume they meant later the same day, but I would phrase it either "later in the day" or "later on in the day".
- 7,930
18
votes
Time of day between morning and noon
I think it's futile to try to find a one-to-one translation from German to English. Just because German has Vormittag doesn't mean English should have an exact counterpart, which I don't think it does....
- 1,465
17
votes
Use of Grade Levels Instead of Age
As an American, I can say that public schooling in the U.S. represents for us a kind of social coming-of-age system (especially during the high school years, which usually encompass the ages of 14-18),...
- 1,711
16
votes
How to describe a time range that starts one day and ends the next day?
The shortest way to say this would probably be
I work an overnight shift.
This means that you start at some point in the evening and finish at some point the following morning.
For phrasing it ...
- 59.6k
16
votes
How did English retain its non-Christian names of the week?
In answer to your question "was there no effort to replace" the names of the days of the week, yes there was.
George Fox (1624 - 1691), a Dissenter who preached in England, Europe and America, had a ...
- 24.9k
14
votes
The Speed Of Time - Does That Phrase Make Sense
Isn't our definition of speed "how far some distance passes in a
certain amount of time"? Doesn't that make it incorrect to say "the
speed of time", because time does not travel any distance?
No....
- 2,512
12
votes
Thank God it's Friday, tomorrow is THE weekend. Why the definite article?
Weekend is Just Another End
While weekend may be a time expression, it is relatively new to the language. Until Saturday became only a half day of work in England’s industrial North, there was no ...
- 28.2k
12
votes
Unusual words used to denote a specific length of time?
Try sennight when you are speaking of a week. I know of no similarly archaic word for fortnight.
Collins
sennight
in British English, Noun
an archaic word for "week"
The word makes sense ...
- 28.9k
11
votes
Accepted
How to describe a time range that starts one day and ends the next day?
You can say that your shift spans two days.
span verb
2 Extend across (a period of time or a range of subjects)
‘A complete planning cycle should ideally span a period of about three to five ...
- 39k
11
votes
Is it true that English has no future tense?
Your belief is incorrect. "I will do my homework tomorrow" is not a contracted form, and there is no historical "uncontracted" form which matches your assumption. See Wikipedia entries on future ...
- 1,673
10
votes
Is it true that English has no future tense?
Allow me to cite an excerpt from an answer posted back in November 13, 2012. The Original Post is entitled How many tenses are there in English?
What is a tense?
In linguistic terminology, "...
- 92.9k
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