epoch means A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable.
epoch is pronounced /ˈiːpɒk/.
Why “epoch” is a great word
A period of history or a person's life marked by notable events or characteristics. From Medieval Latin *epocha*, from Ancient Greek ἐποχή (epokhḗ, 'a pause, fixed point in time'), from ἐπέχω (epékhō, 'to hold in, check'), rooted in ἐπι- (epi-, 'upon') and ἔχω (ékhō, 'to have, hold'); first recorded in English between 1605 and 1615. Unlike an 'era,' which stretches across vague, rolling centuries, or an 'age,' defined by a single dominant feature, an epoch is the precise notch carved into the timeline—a hinge upon which circumstance turns. It is the quiet before a revolution, the final photograph of a house before it is emptied, or the particular silence that follows a sentence once spoken aloud: time not merely passing, but pausing, holding its breath, before stepping across a threshold into what comes next.
Etymology
From Medieval Latin epocha, from Ancient Greek ἐποχή (epokhḗ, “a check, cessation, stop, pause, epoch of a star, i.e., the point at which it seems to halt after reaching the highest, and generally the place of a star; hence, a historical epoch”), from ἐπέχω (epékhō, “to hold in, check”), from ἐπι- (epi-, “upon”) + ἔχω (ékhō, “to have, hold”). Doublet of epoche.
noun
- A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable.
- A notable event which marks the beginning of such a period.
- A specific instant in time, chosen as the point of reference or zero value of a system that involves identifying instants of time.e.g.“UNIX epoch; J2000 epoch”
- A geochronologic unit of hundreds of thousands to millions of years; a subdivision of a period, and subdivided into ages (or sometimes subepochs).
- One complete presentation of the training data set to an iterative machine learning algorithm.e.g.“The neural network was trained over 500 epochs.”
- An intensive chemotherapy regimen for treating aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, consisting of etoposide, prednisolone, Oncovin (vincristine), cyclophosphamide, and hydroxydaunorubicin.
verb
- To divide (data) into segments by time period.e.g.“The continuous data were epoched into segments of 1500 ms (starting 500 ms before visual stimulus onset), time-locked to stimulus onset (0 ms) and sorted according to experimental conditions.”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- epochism 85% match — A tendency to regard the epoch in which one lives as superior to others. vs epoch →
- antiquity 84% match — Ancient times; faraway history; former ages. vs epoch →
- epoche 83% match — Moment of theoretical suspension of all action. vs epoch →
- chronicle 83% match — A written account of events and when they happened, ordered by time. vs epoch →
- prehistory 83% match — The time before written records in any area of the world; the events and conditions of those times. vs epoch →
- anachronism 82% match — A chronological mistake; the erroneous dating of an event, circumstance, or object. vs epoch →
- ephemeral 82% match — Lasting for a short period of time. vs epoch →
- history 82% match — The aggregate of past events, both unrecorded and recorded. vs epoch →