Earth & SkyGreek → English
Epoch
/ˈɛpək/noun
A period of history, or the fixed date from which such a period is measured.
The Greek roots
ἐπί
epí
upon
ἔχω
ékhō
to hold
Literally: “a holding back”
The story of the word
The astronomer's sense is the original and the strict one: an epoch is not a stretch of time but the instant chosen as its origin, the moment for which a star's coordinates are stated, J2000.0 for example. English loosened it into an age. The Greek noun had a second career among the Skeptics, where ἐποχή is suspension of judgement, the deliberate refusal to assent, a use Husserl revived for phenomenology.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Modern Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1610s
Same family
epidemicepilogueschemehectic
In a sentence
Positions are given for epoch J2000.0 and drift slowly afterwards.
The fall of the wall closed one epoch and opened another.