epoch

1 a period marked by distinctive character or reckoned from a fixed point or event [syn: era]

2 (astronomy) the precise date that is the point of reference for which information (as coordinates of a celestial body) is referred [syn: date of reference]

3 a unit of geological time

English

Etymology

From Latin epocha < ἐποχή epokhe

Pronunciation

Noun

1. A particular period of history, especially one considered remarkable or noteworthy.
2. A notable event which marks the beginning of such a period.
3. A precise instant of time that is used as a reference point.
4. In the context of "computing|uncountable": January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT

Synonyms

• a particular period in history: era; age (epoch is a subcategory of era and/or age)

Translations

• Bosnian: epoha
• Bulgarian: епоха (epoha)
• Croatian: epoha
• French: époque
• Finnish: aikakausi, epookki
• German: Epoche
• Greek: εποχή
• Italian: epoca (1)

• Polish: epoka
• Portuguese: época
• Russian: эпоха /epóχa/
• Serbian: епоха epoha
• Spanish: época
• Swedish: epok

See also

• εποχή (Modern Greek)

Depending on context, epoch can refer to:

Period of time

• a distinctive historical period or era
• a unit of the geologic time scale, less than a period and greater than an age
• a phase in the development of the universe with distinctive properties

Moment in time

• epoch (reference date) - a significant event, time, or moment which is chosen as a new origin for time measurements, usually as the delimiting factor of an era.

• January 1 1970 is called the epoch in Linux and BSD in this sense. See Unix time.

• epoch (astronomy) - a precise moment in time for which celestial coordinates or orbital elements are specified

Proper noun

• Epoch (magazine), the literary magazine of Cornell University.
• Epoch (Age of Conan), a guild in Age of Conan's Aquilonia EU server.
• Ha-Tsefirah (lit. Epoch), a Hebrew language newspaper published in 1862 and 1874-1931.
• Epoch (film), a science fiction film directed by Matt Codd
• Epoch Game Pocket Computer, an early hand-held game console
• Epoch Co., the maker of the above and other computer games
• Epoch (Chrono Trigger), a flying time machine in role-playing game Chrono Trigger
• Epoch (DC Comics), a supervillain also known as the Lord of Time
• Epoch (Marvel Comics), a cosmic entity in the Marvel Comics universe.
• Epoch Hunter (World of Warcraft), a boss in World of Warcraft's Caverns of Time; Old Hillsbrad Foothills.
• The Epoch Times, a privately owned Falun Gong-linked newspaper
• Epoch Javascript Calendar is an open source, GPL calendar component for use in web pages written in JavaScript.
• Epoch operating system was a European research project in the 1990s to build an operating system based on the ChorusOS operating system kernel.

Other

• a step in the training process of an artificial neural network

Bronze Age, Dark Ages, Depression Era, Golden Age, Ice Age, Iron Age, Jacksonian Age, Middle Ages, New Deal Era, Prohibition Era, Silver Age, Steel Age, Stone Age, age, days, era, glacial epoch, interval, term, time