deep time
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.03 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Time that is considered on the vast scale of geology or the universe, rather than on the scale of human history.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "Numbers do not seem to work well with regard to deep time. Any number above a couple of thousand years—fifty thousand, fifty million—will with nearly equal effect awe the imagination to the point of paralysis."
- "Yet deep time seemed impervious to the methods of conventional history writing, a state of affairs captured in the word coined to describe this newly remote past: prehistory."
- "The organization of deep time was the special mission of geology, and it set about chronicling rocks into a temporal stratigraphy."
- "But Hutton’s insights really came into their own in the Romantic era of the 19th century. The affective register of deep time was one of terror and wonder, fashioned to fit a vision of the sublime that transcended and yet somehow affirmed humanity."
- "The events of 1859 brought humans and geology together. The idea of deep time was not new. It had been conclusively demonstrated by the international efforts of many geologists culminating, for the British, in Charles Lyell's (1797–1875) Principles of Geology published in three volumes between 1830 and 1833—a book which accompanied Darwin on The Beagle."
- "Sellafield compels this kind of gaze into the abyss of deep time because it is a place where multiple time spans – some fleeting, some cosmic – drift in and out of view."