I'd like to know current usuages of the word "prime time", especially used as an adjective. I'm urgently need some explanations and examples about the word.

Dear megafrog,

Cute name. Would love to know the derivation!

Prime time would be the time of day, generally between 7 and 11 pm, when the television audience would be the greatest.

I can't think of numerous examples of applications of prime time as an adjective, but here are some obvious ones:

prime time television
prime time audience
prime time viewers
prime time listeners
prime time viewing habits
prime time television show surveys
prime time news


...that kind of application.

Hope this is roughly what you're looking for. If not, just clarify your question.

Best regards,
WW

perhaps FROG is looking for ways in which the "original" TV usage has been transferred, in which case I would recommend a google or three.

e.g.; The Grand Central Racquet Club+charges the highest fee I know of for renting either of its two courts—forty-five dollars an hour in prime time. - New Yorker

but prime-time is more interesting than it would appear at first blush--our usage is actually a renewal of a term whose obsolete senses include 1) springtime or spring and 2) the early age of the world.

"It befel in the primetime of the worlde." -Golding, De Mornay

(adjectival usages are left as an exercize for the student :)

our usage is actually a renewal of a term whose obsolete senses include 1) springtime or spring and 2) the early age of the world.

Ah - inherited from the French primtemps, peut-etre?

speaking of which, where's belM?

Only just occurs to me that prim ("prim and proper") is probably related. And then you have "primrose"..

Multi-sport legend Deion Sanders was known as Prime Time. Others more versed in his lore may be able to tell you whether or not he got that cognomen before his TV show Prime Time NFL Starring Deion Sanders.

Um, Shona? Isn't it printemps, with an n? French is not my specialty, but your first m doesn't look right.

Isn't it printemps, with an n?

sacré bleu! that's rite!

Reading this printemps=prime time connection makes me think of the Target/Wal-Mart comments.

Is this pretty much the joke in the parts of the US where one finds Wal-Marts and Target stores?

Here's how the little joke works--and it is a very little joke.

You ask someone where he bought a shirt.

He says at Target, but he pronounces the "g" as the French "zsh" and the "et" as an "ay" Or:..."Tar-zshay"

The little joke is Tarzshay is the upper class Wal-Mart. And, of course, there's no real upper class involved here at all. It's just Target is a cut above--so it's reported--above Wal-Mart, the super bargain center.

Now how does this tangent connect to prime time and printemps? I was just thinking that it would be humorous to refer to prime time television as printemps télévision. I'm probably the only person this sounds humorous to, but I'll go ahead and post this post and just laugh softly to myself.

Best regards,
WW

residing, as I do, in the original home of Target, which has outlasted its parent Day-ton's as a retail touchstone, it was (ironically) called Tarzhay long before Walmart came along.

(Dayton's has been swallowed whole by Marshall Fields)

but then Wal-mart is pronounced "Valmar", and another regional chain, Ames, is "Ah-mehs. and the joke goes on....

I had a shirt once that was labelled "Sacks". Pretty much described the shirt, too.

Isn't it printemps, with an n?

Nevertheless, I do believe it's from Latin primum tempus. Got no support for that notion but.

Yeahbut® the logo ain't pronounced 'tarzhay', sew.

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Could be worse... could be raining!

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Isn't "prime time" 7-10pm CST?

>Yeahbut® the logo ain't pronounced 'tarzhay'...

au contraire, mon ami; that's 'xactly how it pronounced!
:)

printemps, with an n?

Indeed it is. Bit of hypercorrection there, as I knew it was pronounced with an "n". Google on primtemps gives a fair few hits, mind.


On poshifying names (as WW's "Tar-zhay") I always liked the reinventions of some of London's not-so-posh spots:

Battersea becomes "bah-TUR-zee-uh"

Streatham [STRET-um]becomes "Saint Reeth-um"

Clapham [CLAP-um] becomes "Claa'm"

Well, maybe you had to be here...

Fish, thanks for that coin. Poshify is a terrific verb with potentially endless applications.

Now I wonder what it would mean to fishify something?

On poshifying names

Reminds of Sloanes and Soanlys. Sloanes living in the immediate area of Sloane Square and where the others live "'sonly 10 minutes from Sloane Sq."

I wonder what it would mean to fishify something?

Well, I'd say it would be to push it further up the evolutionary scale.

It's only at this level that a creature is able to form a symbiotic relationship with a bicycle, and thus achieve true enlightenment.

Would that be the front light or the rear light?

definitely the poshterior light...

In reply to:

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definitely the poshterior light...

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Or mebbe fishterior light...

Sloanes and Soanlys

Yeah - and I always thought "Sloane Ranger" was a great term.

Quite the opposite extreme to Battersea, of course, albeit just over the River.

Or mebbe fishterior light...

only Jonah knows...

fishterior light

You need really good lights on the seabed.
Seen The Abyss?

Those great big spaceships will cut you up as soon as (fail to) look at you.

Yeah - and I always thought "Sloane Ranger" was a great term.

We have a Sloany fallen on hard times (not enough croissants, probably) working for us. She gets ragged unmercifully. Mostly behind her back, however.