EPOCH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does epoch mean? 

• EPOCH (noun)
  The noun EPOCH has 3 senses:

1. a period marked by distinctive character or reckoned from a fixed point or event

2. (astronomy) an arbitrarily fixed date that is the point in time relative to which information (as coordinates of a celestial body) is recorded

3. a unit of geological time that is a subdivision of a period and is itself divided into ages

  Familiarity information: EPOCH used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EPOCH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A period marked by distinctive character or reckoned from a fixed point or event

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

epoch; era

Hypernyms ("epoch" is a kind of...):

period; period of time; time period (an amount of time)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "epoch"):

day (an era of existence or influence)

age; historic period (an era of history having some distinctive feature)

modern era (the present or recent times)

Instance hyponyms:

Caliphate (the era of Islam's ascendancy from the death of Mohammed until the 13th century; some Moslems still maintain that the Moslem world must always have a calif as head of the community)

Christian era; Common era (the time period beginning with the supposed year of Christ's birth)

Derivation:

epochal (highly significant or important especially bringing about or marking the beginning of a new development or era)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(astronomy) an arbitrarily fixed date that is the point in time relative to which information (as coordinates of a celestial body) is recorded

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

date of reference; epoch

Hypernyms ("epoch" is a kind of...):

date (the particular day, month, or year (usually according to the Gregorian calendar) that an event occurred)

Domain category:

astronomy; uranology (the branch of physics that studies celestial bodies and the universe as a whole)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A unit of geological time that is a subdivision of a period and is itself divided into ages

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("epoch" is a kind of...):

geologic time; geological time (the time of the physical formation and development of the earth (especially prior to human history))

Instance hyponyms:

Holocene; Holocene epoch; Recent; Recent epoch (approximately the last 10,000 years)

Glacial epoch; Pleistocene; Pleistocene epoch (from two million to 11 thousand years ago; extensive glaciation of the northern hemisphere; the time of human evolution)

Pliocene; Pliocene epoch (from 13 million to 2 million years ago; growth of mountains; cooling of climate; more and larger mammals)

Miocene; Miocene epoch (from 25 million to 13 million years ago; appearance of grazing mammals)

Oligocene; Oligocene epoch (from 40 million to 25 million years ago; appearance of sabertoothed cats)

Eocene; Eocene epoch (from 58 million to 40 million years ago; presence of modern mammals)

Paleocene; Paleocene epoch (from 63 million to 58 million years ago; appearance of birds and earliest mammals)

Holonyms ("epoch" is a part of...):

geological period; period (a unit of geological time during which a system of rocks formed)

 Context examples 

Participants receive one of two or more alternative intervention(s) during the initial epoch of the study and receive other intervention(s) during the subsequent epoch(s) of the study.

(Crossover Study, NCI Thesaurus/CDISC)

The textual representation of the epoch.

(Epoch Description, NCI Thesaurus)

The description for Treatment Epoch could be, "The first treatment epoch is a one-week period during which a single dose of one of the three investigational treatments is administered".

(Epoch Description, NCI Thesaurus/BRIDG)

Subjects in different arms will not necessarily pass through the same epochs.

(Clinical Trial Epoch, NCI Thesaurus/BRIDG)

The entrance of the Grants and Crawfords was a favourable epoch.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A non-unique textual identifier for the epoch.

(Epoch Name, NCI Thesaurus)

EXAMPLE(S): first treatment epoch, second treatment epoch, first wash-out epoch, second wash-out epoch.

(Epoch Name, NCI Thesaurus/BRIDG)

EXAMPLE(S): During the second treatment epoch of a study, Arms A and B are still blinded and Arm C is no longer blinded.

(Planned Activity Blinded Description, NCI Thesaurus/BRIDG)

EXAMPLE(S): 6 weeks may be the planned duration for a composite activity that represents the activities occurring during an epoch on arm A.

(Planned Activity Planned Duration, NCI Thesaurus/BRIDG)

Caulfield Gardens was one of those lines of flat-faced pillared, and porticoed houses which are so prominent a product of the middle Victorian epoch in the West End of London.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)