Talk:time of day

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time of day

"the time according to the clock". Isn't this sum of parts? How is this different than time of the year/time of year, time of the week/time of week, etc? (If this is kept, the definition could really use some improvement, by the way.) --Yair rand (talk) 06:48, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Keep Unlike quite a few Latin-based languages, modern English doesn't normally differentiate between time as in "The general quality of the flow of events" (tempus) and time as in "The specific measure of the flow of events until a certain moment" (hora). "time of day" is the nearest we have to a specific term for the latter. It doesn't seem immediately obvious from its parts that the "time" of a "day" is actually a count of the number of hours and minutes that have passed between midnight and a given moment. Note that time of year doesn't have the same kind of meaning - it's a much looser term roughly synonymous with "season", and it's not something that can be measured or compared. Smurrayinchester (talk) 07:48, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think your theory holds water. The only non-obsolete sense we have defines "time of day" as unspecified period of or point in time. --Hekaheka (talk) 18:48, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I use time of day mostly to refer to things like morning vs afternoon or evening, not "7:00 am". Give someone the time of day verifies that it's also used the other way, so I think we're talking about two senses derived from the two different senses of time you mentioned. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:55, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Keep Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 09:11, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

This expression is mostly not used in English as a replacement for the word "time" as in "What time is it?". It is relatively uncommonly used other than as part of true idioms like "not give someone the time of day" [or] to differentiate daytime from nighttime ("any time of day" vs. "any time of night") or from bedtime. Accordingly, I doubt that it is usually the right translation for the words that appear in its translation table. As I review the ambiguous, obsolete, and archaic glosses assigned to many non-English words, I wonder further about how many of the glosses are otherwise inappropriate. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at 14:01, 14 June 2012 (UTC).

On Google Books, the first few pages of hits mostly seem to be split fairly evenly between the hours and minutes sense and the looser morning/evening sense, though admittedly the books that use it in the clock sense tend to be quite dry textbooks (mostly computing and science). Smurrayinchester (talk) 22:26, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I could not find much of anything in which time of day was used in current English to point to a specific point or period in time. It seemed to have sometime had such a meaning in earlier centuries. I would welcome citations from books or other sources, originally written in the last half-century and not quoting earlier usage, that were unambiguously referring to a specific time. I just haven't found it myself and my own intuition saps my enthusiasm for the hunt. DCDuring TALK 00:41, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

1977, 1985, 2006, 2011. It does seem to be less common than I thought though. I'd keep the current definition, but it make a secondary sense under something along the lines of "A period of the day". Smurrayinchester (talk) 05:51, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I believe that the computer time data cites (1985, 2006, and 2011) are specifically to distinguish time variables that use some combined date and time (with a great deal of precision, too, like UTC) from one that uses the familiar recurring 24-hour cycle. That sense would be seem to be attestable in the context of computing based on what you found alone I think. I wonder if there are any other terms, possibly SoP, that are synonymously used in computing for time of day. DCDuring TALK 12:07, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Keep entry, but replace content with what DCDuring said! —Ruakh_TALK 14:38, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I took a stab at it. Please inspect and improve. DCDuring TALK 16:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

To me it very much looks like the sum of "time", "of" and "day". If we are missing a sense of "time", let's add it there and not to a place where few people would know to look for it. Even if "time of day" is kept, the appropriate sense should be found also under "time". --Hekaheka (talk) 18:39, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

In many ways it does to me, too. But if non-native speakers persist in attempting to use it with the consequence of marking themselves as non-native, we can be useful as a source of corrective information, provided we are capable of preparing something that is both correct and intelligible. I am not sure by what path a non-native speaker using Wiktionary would come to this entry. From the entries for the translations? From the search box? DCDuring TALK 20:11, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Kept. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 05:27, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Missing idiomatic sense?

"That's the time of day" appears to mean something like "that's the state of affairs", and/or "that's right / that's the ticket". Richard Marsh (author) has used it a few times: [1]. Equinox ◑ 20:55, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

by ellipsis

What does by ellipsis refer to in the last meaning? --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:24, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Basic intelligence or knowledge

Basic intelligence or knowledge. Used with negative constructions of the verb "know."
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/time+of+day

--Backinstadiums (talk) 11:42, 14 June 2020 (UTC)