kairos
/ˈkaɪɹɒs/
kairos noun: a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action; the opportune and decisive moment.
Noun
kairos (plural kairoi)
- A time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action; the opportune and decisive moment.
- The—so-called! friends—rational world. If only they, Mom&Dad&Buddy&Sis, dear-but-square ones, could but know the kairos, the supreme moment…1968, Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →OCLC, page 129
- Kairos is not measurable. Kairos is ontological. In kairos we are, we are fully in isness, not negatively, as Sartre saw the isness of the oak tree, but fully, wholly, positively.1972, Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals), San Francisco: Harper & Row, →ISBN, page 245
Forms of kairos
| plural | kairoi |
|---|---|
| alternative form | kairós |
Origin of kairos
Borrowed from Ancient Greek καιρός (kairós).
Words formed from kairos
Questions about kairos
- What does kairos mean?
- Kairos means a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action; the opportune and decisive moment.
- What part of speech is kairos?
- Kairos is a noun.
- How do you pronounce kairos?
- Kairos is pronounced /ˈkaɪɹɒs/.
- What is the plural of kairos?
- The plural of kairos is kairoi.
Words near kairos in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kairos (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: En-us-kairos.oga.
Cite this entry: “kairos.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kairos. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.