diachronic

Adjective

diachronic (comparative more diachronic, superlative most diachronic)

1. Occurring over or changing with time.
   • The sum total of their acts forms a pattern of diachronic historical laws, describing the transition from one social system to the next, and also functional laws showing the interrelation of such features as technology, forms of property, class barriers, state institutions, and ideology.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume I: The Founders, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: powstanie (in...
   • […] one salient value of archival magazine preservation is that individual issues register, however unintentionally, the small, incremental, diachronic movements within a culture.2005 April 24, Los Angeles Times

   Antonyms:

   synchronic

2. Of, pertaining to or concerned with changes that occur over time.
   • It is plain that natural science has developed more diachronic concern, more of the longer historical approach in its interests and repertory, in the last two centuries than in the two millennia before.1963, Alfred Louis Kroeber, An Anthropologist Looks at History, page 169
   • I also take a more diachronic perspective and relate the growth of empire to changes in the regional market system as they occurred in the transition from the Early Aztec to the Late Aztec periods.1996, Richard E. Blanton, “3: The Basin of Mexico Market System and the Growth of Empire”, in Frances Berdan, editor, Aztec Imperial Strategies, page 52

   Antonyms:

   synchronic