ERA

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ERA mean? 

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

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

2. a major division of geological time; an era is usually divided into two or more periods

3. (baseball) a measure of a pitcher's effectiveness; calculated as the average number of earned runs allowed by the pitcher for every nine innings pitched

  Familiarity information: ERA used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ERA (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 ("era" is a kind of...):

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

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

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)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A major division of geological time; an era is usually divided into two or more periods

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

era; geological era

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

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

Meronyms (parts of "era"):

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

Instance hyponyms:

Age of Mammals; Cenozoic; Cenozoic era (approximately the last 63 million years)

Age of Reptiles; Mesozoic; Mesozoic era (from 230 million to 63 million years ago)

Paleozoic; Paleozoic era (from 544 million to about 230 million years ago)

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

aeon; eon (the longest division of geological time)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(baseball) a measure of a pitcher's effectiveness; calculated as the average number of earned runs allowed by the pitcher for every nine innings pitched

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

earned run average; ERA

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

criterion; measure; standard; touchstone (a basis for comparison; a reference point against which other things can be evaluated)

Domain category:

ball; baseball; baseball game (a ball game played with a bat and ball between two teams of nine players; teams take turns at bat trying to score runs)

 Context examples 

Before this discovery, the earliest evidence of odontomas came from ice age-era fossils, about 1 million years ago.

(Scientists discover fossil tumor in 255 million-year-old mammal forerunner, NSF)

This provides a great opportunity for ALMA to help study the era when the first stars and galaxies “switched on” — the earliest epoch yet probed.

(Ancient Stardust Sheds Light on the First Stars, ESO)

Now exposed on the mountain's slopes, each layer reveals a different era of Martian history and holds clues about the prevailing environment at the time.

(NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds an Ancient Oasis on Mars, NASA)

The recently discovered lakes and streams appeared roughly a billion years after a well-documented, earlier era of wet conditions on ancient Mars.

(Some Ancient Mars Lakes Came Long After Others, NASA)

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai is the first island of this type to erupt and persist in the modern satellite era, it gives scientists an unprecedented view from space of its early life and evolution.

(NASA Shows New Tongan Island Made of Tuff Stuff, Likely to Persist Years, NASA)

From the end of the Ice Age to the beginning of the industrial era, atmospheric carbon dioxide remained remarkably stable at 278 ppm.

(Warming due to carbon dioxide jumped by half in 25 years, NOAA)

The study found that when the whites disappeared, a Jurassic-era predator called the sevengill shark (Notorhynchus cepedianus) moved in.

(Study indicates as great white shark disappears, living fossil moves in, Wikinews)

The Lost 52 Project announced on Sunday that a sunken World War II-era submarine wreck they found last June was the remains of the U.S.S. Grayback.

(Lost 52 Project announces discovery of wrecked sub near Okinawa, Wikinews)

It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The second period of the Mesozoic era, thought to have covered the span of time between 190 and 135 million years ago.

(Jurassic period, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)