epoch
/ˈiːpɒk//ˈɛp.ək/
epoch noun: a particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable.
Noun (1)
epoch (plural epochs)
- A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable.
- I grew bitter in my words—I believed the worst of everyone; nay, I sometimes doubted the affection of my kind, my indulgent parents. But let me hastily pass over this vain and profitless epoch,—the fierce tempest, and the weary calm, were but the appointed means by which I reached the harbour of...1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 198
- And it occasionally happens that a period in which one had, hitherto, been mainly looking for the coming to birth of new things, suddenly reveals itself as an epoch of fading and decay.1924, F. Hopman, transl., The Waning of the Middle Ages, translation of Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen by Johan Huizinga
- 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.
- UNIX epoch; J2000 epoch
- Appendix A gives formulae for the calculation of the orbital elements of the planets at any time referred to the mean ecliptic and equinox of the epoch of noon on 1st January 2000; this is called the J2000 epoch.2000, Carl D. Murray, Stanley F. Dermott, Solar System Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN
- A geochronologic unit of hundreds of thousands to millions of years; a subdivision of a period, and subdivided into ages (or sometimes subepochs).
- Now during the time of the glacial epoch the greatest distance of the sun in winter was 98¼ millions of miles, whereas it is now, in winter, only 91½ millions of miles, the mean distance being taken as 93 million miles.1881, Alfred Russel Wallace, chapter VIII, in Island Life
- Phoenix and Lubbock are both caught in severe drought, and it is going to get much worse. We may see many such [dust] storms in the decades ahead, along with species extinctions, radical disturbance of ecosystems, and intensified social conflict over land and water. Welcome to the Anthropocene, the...2012 January, Donald Worster, “A Drier and Hotter Future”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2012, page 70
- One complete presentation of the training data set to an iterative machine learning algorithm.
- The neural network was trained over 500 epochs.
- For now, let's test and evaluate our GAN by comparing the results from the first epoch with the generated images from the last epoch.2021, Joe Papa, PyTorch Pocket Reference, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- generation
Verb
epoch (third-person singular simple present epochs, present participle epoching, simple past and past participle epoched)
- To divide (data) into segments by time period.
- 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.2015 July 6, “Stronger Neural Modulation by Visual Motion Intensity in Autism Spectrum Disorders”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI
Noun (2) capitalized: EPOCH
EPOCH (uncountable)
- An intensive chemotherapy regimen for treating aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, consisting of etoposide, prednisolone, Oncovin (vincristine), cyclophosphamide, and hydroxydaunorubicin.
epoch meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali
epoch in Hindi
- particular period of history
- युग yug, काल kāl, ज़माना zamānā
epoch in Marathi
- युगप्रसंग, युगांतर
epoch in Urdu
- particular period of history
- دَور daur, زَمانَہ zamāna, عَصْر 'asr
epoch in Bengali
- particular period of history
- কাল kal, যুগ jug, জমানা jomana
More languagesFewer languages
- epoch in Telugu
- శకము śakamu
- epoch in Malayalam
- കാലഘട്ടം, നിർണ്ണീതകാലം, യുഗം
- epoch in Kannada
- ಯುಗ, ಶಕ, ಅವಧಿ, ವಿಶಿಷ್ಟ
- epoch in Sanskrit
- ऋतु ṛtú
- epoch in Pashto
- عصر asᶕr, دور dawr, زمانه zamāná, zəmāná, دوره dawrá
- epoch in Tagalog
- daktion
- epoch in Arabic
- عَصْر ʕaṣr, عُصُور ʕuṣūr, زَمَان zamān
- epoch in Malay
- zaman, masa, epok
- epoch in Indonesian
- kala, kurun
- epoch in Thai
- ยุค yúk, กาล gaan
- epoch in Vietnamese
- thời đại
- epoch in Myanmar
- ယုဂ် yug
Examples of epoch in a sentence
- But let me hastily pass over this vain and profitless epoch,—the fierce tempest, and the weary calm, were but the appointed means by which I reached the harbour of faith and rest.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XVII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry...
- There are two major epoch times associated with most timestamps: 1970-01-01 00:00:00 and 1601-01-01 00:00:00.2016, Preston Miller, Chapin Bryce, Learning Python for Forensics, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 281:
- The .NET epoch is midnight at the start of January 1st, AD 1, although that's AD 1 in a proleptic Gregorian calendar, which refers to even more complexity we haven't talked about yet.2022, Tomasz Lelek, Jon Skeet, Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs: How to Make Good Programming Decisions, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 155:
- Welcome to the Anthropocene, the epoch when humans have become a major geological and climatic force.2012 January, Donald Worster, “A Drier and Hotter Future”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 26...
Synonyms of epoch
Forms of epoch
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | epochs |
| alternative form | epocha |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | epochs |
| present participle | epoching |
| past participle | epoched |
| past | epoched |
Origin of epoch
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.
Acronym, from the initial letters of the various drugs.
Words formed from epoch
Questions about epoch
- What does epoch mean?
- Epoch means a particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable.
- What is epoch in Hindi?
- Epoch in Hindi is युग (yug), काल (kāl), ज़माना (zamānā). See Epoch meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use epoch in a sentence?
- But let me hastily pass over this vain and profitless epoch,—the fierce tempest, and the weary calm, were but the appointed means by which I reached the harbour of faith and rest.
- What part of speech is epoch?
- Epoch can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce epoch?
- Epoch is pronounced /ˈiːpɒk/ (UK).
- What is the plural of epoch?
- The plural of epoch is epochs.
Words near epoch in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: epoch (page history and authors); EPOCH (page history and authors); epoch (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); శకము (Telugu) (page history and authors); epoch (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); epoch (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ऋतु (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-epoch.wav, en-us-epoch.ogg.
Cite this entry: “epoch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/epoch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.