Word.ws English Dictionary

prime time

prime time noun: the block of programming on television during the middle of the evening, usually between 7:00 pm and 11:00 pm.

Noun

prime time (uncountable)

  1. The block of programming on television during the middle of the evening, usually between 7:00 pm and 11:00 pm.
    • The station is moving the new comedy to a prime time slot next month.
  2. The busiest or most important period.
    • Summer is prime time for road construction.
    • Mass-produced mithai are readily available online, but these five independent shops make their sweets by hand every day, offering their local South Asian communities a taste of the familiar. Diwali is their prime time.2022 October 17, Priya Krishna, “It’s Not Diwali Without Mithai”, in The New York Times
  3. (figuratively) Maturity; the state at which a person or product will be accepted by the mainstream.
    • It took years longer than proponents had hoped, but wireless data is ready for prime time.2000, Ira Brodsky, Network World, page 18
    • Can these measures be regarded as useful, promising, or not ready for prime time? We focus only on the utility of these measures for use by policymakers.2005, Leanna Stiefel, Measuring School Performance and Efficiency: Implications for Practice and Research, Eye On Education, →ISBN, page 13
  4. (obsolete) Spring.
  5. (obsolete) A new period or time of youthfulness; the beginning of something.

Adjective

prime time (not comparable)

  1. Showing or broadcasting during prime time.

prime time meaning in Tamil and Malay

prime time in Tamil

வானொலி, பார்க்கும் நேரம், முதன்மை, பிரதம நேரம்

prime time in Malay

block of television programming
masa perdana, masa prima, waktu perdana, waktu prima

Examples of prime time in a sentence

  • Now, as more and more businesses re-orient themselves to serve the consumer, ethnography has entered prime time.2007, John E. Richardson, Annual Editions: Marketing 08/09, →ISBN:
  • And as with commodity-based models, tour-based models have also not yet reached prime time.2008, J. Richard Kuzmyak, Forecasting Metropolitan Commercial and Freight Travel, Transportation Research Board, →ISBN, page 3:

Forms of prime time

alternative formprime-time
alternative formprimetime
alternative form (archaic)prymtyme

Words formed from prime time

Questions about prime time

What does prime time mean?
Prime time means the block of programming on television during the middle of the evening, usually between 7:00 pm and 11:00 pm.
What is prime time in Tamil?
Prime time in Tamil is வானொலி, பார்க்கும் நேரம், முதன்மை. See Prime time meaning in Tamil.
How do you use prime time in a sentence?
Now, as more and more businesses re-orient themselves to serve the consumer, ethnography has entered prime time.
What part of speech is prime time?
Prime time can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near prime time in the dictionary

  1. prime rings
  2. prime subring
  3. prime suspect
  4. prime suspects
  5. prime the pump
  6. prime time
  7. prime triplet
  8. prime triplets
  9. prime up
  10. prime-time
  11. Primeau

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prime time (page history and authors); prime time (Tamil Wiktionary) (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-prime time.wav.

Cite this entry: “prime time.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prime_time. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.