Time

Time is the most frequently occurring noun in English, according to the Oxford Dictionaries site, and the 55th commonest word in the language. And it keeps growing. The Oxford English Dictionary has been editing the entry for ‘time’ over the last quarter and it has added around forty new ‘time’ phrases. Several of them are a reflection on our busy lives these days; new sub-entries at the main 'time' entry include: time constraint, time management, time pressure (and time pressured), time-sensitive and time-starved. Time-filler has only just gone in to the Dictionary, but time-waster and time-wasting have always been there as entries in their own right. Time-wasting and time-waster date back to the 17th century, although the OED says that the former was “rare before the mid-19th century”.

The fact that a word has only just gone in to the Dictionary does not mean necessarily that it is a new word. The first citation for time-filler is from 1893, and for time-starved from 1894. Time money has only just gone in to the Dictionary, but already it is described as “now rare”; it means “money loaned, or available for loan, for a set period”, and it was first recorded in 1873. Time-warped has gone into the Dictionary for the first time but, not as a sub-entry of the main 'time' entry as the words above, but as a headword in its own right. Its use in science fiction dates back to the 1930s but it was first recorded in print in 1841 (meaning "warped or distorted by the passing of time").

 

The verb 'times' has just been given its own entry in the OED. It has a technical meaning in the building and surveying industries, but another, colloquial, meaning is "to multiply" and many of us will have used the verb well before its entry into the Dictionary (eg "do I times these numbers together?"). The fact that there is a verb 'to times' means that there is also an -ing form, timesing, and this too is a sub-entry at 'times'.

Comments

[Polish Faruri]

Time is the most precious thing in my life.

[Flickr]

Agree with you !

[Earl]

This only vouch the golden element time has and this, basically, is because time is most susceptible to change.