noun

• 1A period of time in history or a person's life, typically one marked by notable events or particular characteristics.

  ‘the Victorian epoch’

  More example sentences

  • ‘British chronology is reckoned in royal reigns; epochs of history are named after kings and queens: the Elizabethan, Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian ages.’
  • ‘She explains that in earlier historical epochs people had little appreciation and time for it.’
  • ‘Here the Qur'an refers to the creation of the heavens and the earth in six long periods or epochs, which the scientists have no objection to.’
  • ‘She traces its itinerary from the colonial epoch to the 19th century, the period in which the suburban house comes to represent an alternative to the cities for the well-to-do classes in search of privacy.’
  • ‘In these plans, Condorcet divided the historical record into nine epochs spanning the progress of the human mind from the dawn of civilization to his own time.’
  • ‘Similarly, Marx contends that without content, logic can tell us nothing about specific problem domains or specific historical epochs.’
  • ‘Throughout time, major wars have defined historical epochs and charted the rise and decline of great powers.’
  • ‘The University of Bristol's MA in Medieval and Early modern History is new to the department and re-examines the traditional rigid periodisation of the two epochs.’
  • ‘Procedures in other parts of the world and in other epochs were similar in principle although different in detail and in the degree of elaboration which was thought necessary or found feasible.’
  • ‘Throughout time, major wars have defined historical epochs and charted the rise and decline of great powers.’
  • ‘In the epoch of globalisation it is impossible to defend social and democratic rights within a national framework.’
  • ‘His early woodcuts, moreover, influenced a generation and evoke an epoch.’
  • ‘This book seeks to highlight the glory of certain epochs of our ancient history.’
  • ‘The painting illustrates an epoch in Goan cultural history.’
  • ‘In his lecture ‘Spirit of the Age’ he divided history into three epochs.’
  • ‘There is a parallel here with previous epochs in human history, notably the invention of the printing press and the birth of the Renaissance.’
  • ‘Independent investigations undertaken in this sphere would undoubtedly shed new light or at least throw more light on isolated historical events and entire epochs.’
  • ‘Chekhov's life straddled two epochs of Russian history.’
  • ‘The architecture and layout of Cairo reflect the various epochs of its history.’
  • ‘At century's end, historian Frederick Jackson Turner saw the closing of the frontier as the end of an epoch in American history.’

  Synonyms

  era, age, period, time, aeon, span

  View synonyms

  1. 1.1The beginning of a distinctive period in the history of someone or something.
     ‘welfare reform was an epoch in the history of U.S. social policy’
     More example sentences

     • ‘This is the beginning of a new epoch, the beginning of a new great democracy.’
     • ‘We can even speak of the beginning of a new epoch.’
     • ‘Mrs Raistrick said the ceremony ‘marked an epoch in the educational history of Upper Wharfedale and, we hope, begins a new era of development and progress in education.’’
     • ‘With that a new epoch in the history of imperialism was introduced.’
     • ‘Mankind had entered the epoch of the social revolution.’
     • ‘When the forms of production come into conflict with existing social relations, a revolutionary epoch arises.’
     Synonyms

     era, age, period, time, aeon, span

     View synonyms
  2. 1.2Geology A division of time that is a subdivision of a period and is itself subdivided into ages, corresponding to a series in chronostratigraphy.
     ‘the Pliocene epoch’
     More example sentences

     • ‘Gold deposition was the most productive during the course of the Hercynian and Kimmerian metallogenic epochs and the Mezo-Cenozoic activation stage.’
     • ‘The culmination of the cooling trend was the Pleistocene epoch, or Great Ice Age, of the last 1.8 million years.’
     • ‘The Pleistocene epoch occurred between about 1.8 million and 10,500 years ago.’
     • ‘The long Eocene epoch witnessed only four independent first appearances of gastropods with a labral tooth.’
     • ‘About halfway through the Pliocene epoch several important tectonic events occurred.’
     Synonyms

     era, age, period, time, aeon, span

     View synonyms
  3. 1.3Astronomy An arbitrarily fixed date relative to which planetary or stellar measurements are expressed.
     ‘One of these galaxy clusters is the most distant proto-cluster ever found and the other is the most massive known galaxy cluster for its epoch.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘In particular, Steidel is known for the development of a technique that effectively locates early galaxies at prescribed cosmic epochs, allowing for the study of large samples of galaxies in the early universe.’
     • ‘The Perfect Cosmological Principle claimed that the Universe was not only similar from place to place but also from time to time: no astronomical observations could absolutely characterize the cosmic epoch at which we live.’
     • ‘Then for each of the simulated epochs, a median of measurements taken at this epoch was computed.’
     • ‘As a result, the constellations at these two different epochs can simulate the GPS and Galileo constellations at a single epoch.’