Word.ws English Dictionary

five-minute hypothesis

five-minute hypothesis noun: the skeptical hypothesis that the world came into existence, with all apparent signs of history and the past fully-formed, only five minutes ago.

Noun

five-minute hypothesis (uncountable)

  1. The skeptical hypothesis that the world came into existence, with all apparent signs of history and the past fully-formed, only five minutes ago.

Origin of five-minute hypothesis

Initially conceived, and likely coined by Bertrand Russell.

Questions about five-minute hypothesis

What does five-minute hypothesis mean?
Five-minute hypothesis means the skeptical hypothesis that the world came into existence, with all apparent signs of history and the past fully-formed, only five minutes ago.
What part of speech is five-minute hypothesis?
Five-minute hypothesis is a noun.

Words near five-minute hypothesis in the dictionary

  1. five-hundredths
  2. five-in-a-row
  3. five-knuckle shuffle
  4. five-leaved ivy
  5. five-legged
  6. five-minute hypothesis
  7. five-nine
  8. five-nines
  9. five-o
  10. five-o'clock shadow
  11. five-o'clock shadows

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: five-minute hypothesis (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.

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