The term “moment” originally referred to a 14-second period in medieval times, but now means a short amount of time. Other time measurements include the jiffy, blink of an eye, and ancient Egyptian division of daylight.
In modern English, the term “moment” refers to a short, unspecified amount of time. The term is thought to date back to the 14th century and was used to refer to a 14-second period. An hour in medieval times therefore consisted of 90 moments. The Jewish calendar has a shorter definition of a moment, called a rega, which is roughly equivalent to 40/5 of a second. In 144, scientist and poet Miroslav Holub proposed the idea that a moment is approximately the average time it takes a person to read one line of verse.
Learn more about time measurements:
The term “jiffy” is often used as a non-specific short period of time, but it is also a computer technical term that refers to the amount of time it takes for a computer system to signal to a processor – about 0.01 seconds.
The phrase “in the blink of an eye” comes from the Latin word atomus and is considered to be about 160 milliseconds, or one 376th of a minute.
The ancient Egyptians, around 1500 BC, are thought to have been the first to measure time, dividing the period from sunrise to sunset into 12 parts.
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