Times

How to spell times

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce times

What does times mean?

1. nounRepeated instances or occasions on which something happens.
2. nounParticular periods of history or conditions of life.
3. prepositionMultiplied by, used between two numbers in arithmetic.
4. verbMeasures the duration of something, or schedules it for a chosen moment (third person singular).

Times in a sentence

• noun

  She has visited the dentist three times this year.

• noun

  Money was tight in those difficult times.

• preposition

  Three times four equals twelve.

• verb

  The coach times every sprint with a stopwatch.

• noun

  We rang the office several times before anyone answered.

• noun

  The museum captures everyday life in medieval times.

Where does times come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is simply the plural of 'time', which descends from the Old English noun 'tima', meaning a stretch or point of duration, a season, or a fitting moment. That word came from a Germanic root tied to the idea of dividing or measuring, and it is distantly related to 'tide', which once also meant a period of time before it narrowed to the rise and fall of the sea. From the early medieval period 'times' was used for repeated occasions and for stretches of history, and by the late Middle Ages it picked up the arithmetical sense of multiplication, as in 'three times four'. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable for a thousand years, keeping the silent final 'e' of the singular under its plural ending. Its main spelling pitfall is the herb homophone 'thymes', so the missing 'h' is the thing to watch.

How the word is built

• time (from Old English tima: a period or point)
• -s (plural / third-person verb marker)