EPOCH

Pronunciation (US):

• 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) the precise date that is the point of reference for which information (as coordinates of a celestial body) is referred
3. a unit of geological time

  Familiarity information: EPOCH used as a noun is uncommon.

• EPOCH (noun)

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)

Meaning:

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

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)

Meaning:

A unit of geological time

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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