New Word #22: A Period Of Time

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I’ve always thought there are a lot of words to signify a period of time, but when I listed them out, there were not as many as I thought. I must have missed some. Please let me know if you have used or encountered such a word before. I’ve never used any of the words–usually I just use the word “break”. Should be more adventurous with words, but it’s easy said than done.

A Period Of Time

sojourn: a temporary stay.

stint: a person’s fixed or allotted period of work. “His varied career included a three-year stint as a teacher.

tenure: a period for which an office is held.

incumbency: the holding of an office or the period during which one is held.

epoch: a period of time in history or a person’s life, typically one marked by notable events or particular characteristics.

eon or aeon: an indefinite and very long period of time, often a period exaggerated for humorous or rhetorical effect.

Time In Between

interval: an intervening time or space.

intermission: a pause or break.

interlude: an intervening period of time.

recess: a period of time when the proceedings of a parliament, committee, court of law, or other official body are temporarily suspended.

lame duck session: an official (especially the president) in the final period of office, after the election of a successor–an ineffectual or unsuccessful period for this person.

A Long Period Of Time

annum: a year. Per annum is each year.

biennium: a specified period of two years.

triennium: a specified period of three years.

centennium: a space of one hundred years.

10 thoughts on “New Word #22: A Period Of Time

  1. Schools have their terms, semesters, and breaks. Timescales include epochs, eras, lifetimes, hangtimes, trienniums. Movies have running times, rockets have countdowns, and seasons have phases.

    Liked by 1 person

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