epoch

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable.
  2. A notable event which marks the beginning of such a period.
  3. A specific instant in time, chosen as the point of reference or zero value of a system that involves identifying instants of time.
  4. A geochronologic unit of hundreds of thousands to millions of years; a subdivision of a period, and subdivided into ages (or sometimes subepochs).
  5. One complete presentation of the training data set to an iterative machine learning algorithm.
verb
  1. To divide (data) into segments by time period.
noun
  1. An intensive chemotherapy regimen for treating aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, consisting of etoposide, prednisolone, Oncovin (vincristine), cyclophosphamide, and hydroxydaunorubicin.

Pronunciation

/ˈiːpɒk/ /ˈɛpɒk/ /ˈɛpək/ LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-epoch.wav LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-epoch2.wav /ˈɛp.ək/ /ˈɛpˌɑk/ /ˈiˌpɑk/ /ˈeɪˌpɑk/ en-us-epoch.ogg

Word forms

epoch epochs epocha epoching epoched

Etymology

From Medieval Latin epocha, from Ancient Greek ἐποχή (epokhḗ, “a check, cessation, stop, pause, epoch of a star, i.e., the point at which it seems to halt after reaching the highest, and generally the place of a star; hence, a historical epoch”), from ἐπέχω (epékhō, “to hold in, check”), from ἐπι- (epi-, “upon”) + ἔχω (ékhō, “to have, hold”). Doublet of epoche.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.