|
|
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7
stranger
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7 |
Greetings,
Ever since I encountered this expression a year or so ago, I have been fascinated by it - it captures a consciousness of a temporal and spatial continuity so succintly and elegantly, it is almost painfully joyful to contemplate. Even more interestingly, it seems that it is not an incidental literary occasion. In Bulgarian, for instance, we speak of time in terms of produlzhitelnost [продължителност, continuity, duration], from dulzhina [дължина, length] which is a common measurement of spatial distance. The latter, I suppose, is more akin to the English expression 'time-span' rather than 'space of time', yet it assumes the same awareness.
So, I wonder where did the phrase originate from and whether other languages have the same implicit conscioussness of a time-space confounded-ness...
Thought it was an exciting expression to start my activity within these boards with. It's been a great pleasure to have the reliable morning company of Wordsmith's 'word a day' mail-friend and to occasionally indulge in your enthralling discussions. Thanks for that to this wonderful community and Wordsmith's 'library-keepers'!
Regards,
Marina
Last edited by Marina Uzunova; 07/27/11 06:49 AM.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,706
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,706 |
Thats a nice introduction Marina, welcome.
expiry dates comes to my mind...I'm always checking them both at work and when out shopping.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,922 Likes: 3
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,922 Likes: 3 |
----please, draw me a sheep----
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
formerly known as etaoin...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7
stranger
|
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7 |
Thanks for the kind welcomes, all!
Unfortunately, Candy, I am not sure I get the connection between expire dates and the spatial concept of temporal duration... Maybe it is just some meaning nuance I am missing: is expiry used to refer to space distances too?
Come to think of it, it does imply a linear span - and time (probably inferring from man's experience with space?) is predominantly thought of in linear terms, in post-Modern ages that is...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
Marina, if you are fascinated by time in general, you may find this old discussion to be of some interest. time on my hands WARNING: this is a very old (and very long?) thread, and some of the newbies here may want to avoid it as it generally causes maudlin reactions from the OFs, such as remain.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7
stranger
|
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7 |
Very interesting, tsuwm, thank you. It will take some space of time to go through it carefully, but it will definetely be worth the time.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
Welcome Marina. I've aways liked 'time span', tijdspanne(Du), because of all other definitions involved, such as duration of time, period, a while, an era, etc. it clearly expresses the stretchability time contains ( whatever time may be). In Dutch spannen means 'to stretch'.
On a clock five minutes is five minutes, but the sense of five minutes may vary from half a minute to half an hour. (roughly estimated)
A space of time I had not read or heard of before.
(thanks for the link tsuwm)
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 677
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 677 |
The Forever War - excellent scifi read that covers time and space and what it entails - the science of the tijme changes are accurate  and so slightly scary
----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,706
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 1,706 |
Unfortunately, Candy, I am not sure I get the connection between expire dates and the spatial concept of temporal duration... Maybe it is just some meaning nuance I am missing: is expiry used to refer to space distances too?
Sorry Marina, no, I was just posting what came to my mind at the time, (so to speak). Nothing to to do with 'space distance'.....just that expiry dates put a limit on time.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,922 Likes: 3
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,922 Likes: 3 |
I don't think I've ever heard them called that....expiry dates.
Where I come from it's "expiration dates".
----please, draw me a sheep----
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
I don't think I've ever heard them called that....expiry dates.
Where I come from it's "expiration dates".
I think it's a regional thing. I use "expiry date" because I like the sound of it when giving my CC info over the phone. Nobody has ever asked for a clarification or been confused by it. I live on the Left Coast of the central portion of the North American continent.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,922 Likes: 3
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,922 Likes: 3 |
Must be regional. If its used here, then I might just pick up
your habit. Certainly a shorter word.
It's like people who use "uncomfortibility" for discomfort.
Why make it more difficult? Seven syllables when three will do.
"Expiry" - I like it.
----please, draw me a sheep----
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7
stranger
|
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7 |
Thanks everyone so much for your inputs.
BranShea, yes, stretchability is certainly implied in 'time span'. 'A space of time', on the other hand, points to a desire and struggle to elevate the subjectivity of experienced time to a more or less objective fact. Or phenomenon (!): I've been thinking that there is not a single better illustration of the phrase than cinema - its temporal duration arises out of the space that frames cover. Could experienced (subjective) time get any more objective?
I've only read the phrase in Dickens - 'Oliver Twist'. But maybe it dates further back...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
Nice to see you back on the subject. To me space and time are such intangible concepts that I cannot really understand what you mean, I fear. We have clocks, mesure and temperature systems that give us the illlusion that time, space and temperature and maybe even colour are objective facts.
I look upon 'a space of time' like an Alice in Wonderland.
I have no idea.
Do you still have that Dickens frase in context?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter. from chapter one it's simply a duration, here. ___ and.. ..and although the recognition was only for an instant - for the briefest space of time that can possibly be conceived - it was enough to show the old man that he had been observed. a moment? ___ and now, the OED entry (found under space, rather than time) space of time n. a period of time.
c1500 Melusine (1895) 335 He came to Nerbonne where he rested hym a lytel space of tyme.
1565 T. Cooper Thesaurus at Intercapedo, After a space of time.
1657 A. Sparrow Rationale Bk. Common Prayer (1661) 244 A good space of time to do it in.
1796 F. Burney Camilla I. ii. xiv. 371 To avoid them and their communications, for however short a space of time, was now her sole aim.
1880 A. H. Sayce Introd. Sci. of Lang. I. 230 The number of the vibrations in any given space of time.
1926 People's Home Jrnl. Feb. 18/1 We want to accomplish as much as possible in the shortest space of time.
2004 Jockey Slut Feb. 92/2 I've never learnt so much in such a short space of time.
Last edited by tsuwm; 08/07/11 07:03 PM.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
Jockey Slut was a British music magazine which ran between 1993 and 2004, focusing mainly on dance music and club culture. -wiki link
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
and while I'm at it, intercapedo is given as 'interval, space' by a couple of Latin dict's.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
I see you had some time on your hands and thanks for the eleborate Dickens and dictionary details. A simple duration and a single moment, though in the íntercapedo I'm not sure what Jockey Slut and John Burgess were doing with their space of time.
So intercapedo covers both space and time. Fine. Which makes not much difference to our perception of time and space at least not mine.
'for the briefest space of time that can possibly be conceived -' is rather interesting but...one briefest space of time will sure not be of the same duration as the next one.
Last edited by BranShea; 08/08/11 09:09 AM. Reason: typos, typos.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
Last edited by tsuwm; 08/07/11 10:47 PM.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7
stranger
|
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7 |
Thanks, tsuwm, yes, that's the quotation in Dickens. Didn't know about 'intercapedo', very interesting. 'Capedo' is said to designate one type of vessel used to hold the entrails in Roman sacrifices (see, for example, 'Manual of classical literature' by Eschenburg and Fiske on Google Books, yay for online references :)). If this line of thinking is followed, it could cautiously be inferred that 'intercapedo' (also translated as 'an intermission') points to that very short mo(ment) of rest and preparation - briefly after the body has been purified (or, rather, the entrails have been purified in preparation for their sacrifice, for it was the entrails that were sacrificed and the actual meat of the body utilized, i.e. consumed, after that, right? or I may be mistaken...) and just before it was sacrificed to the Gods. In other words, the restful interval of intermission between the earthly and heavenly life and the only moment when earthly creatures (men) could gain the benevolence of Gods and, thus, become moral and feel the deified experience of afterlife.
Of course, this is a purely speculative inference, yet, in this sense, it would seem to guide towards a more general meaning of 'intercapedo' and 'a space of time' as the earthly life - in all its impurities and in all endeavours to get rid of them in preparation for the passing into the purer heavenly dwelling. Romans, like the Greeks, then seem to have had an awareness of time that was very morally bound.
The 'space thing' must have occured later - when a conception of time was already imbued with more objectivity, i.e. a connection of time to the physical duration that was observed from men's surroundings (16th century, as OED says?).
Which is what, I suppose, I meant with the above post, BranShea. Time, as you say, is a more or less illusionary concept, a subjective experience and that's a very frustrating thought - hence our man-made devices to elevate it to a fact, to a comforting objectivity like the seeming objectivity of space which lays before us in its varied natural and manly incarnations. If one can impregnate time with and ground it in the indubitable fact of passing, moving space (motion, like the passing frames of cinema), doesn't it become more objective, a certainty, still illusionary, as we realize in the back of our heads, yet very comfortingly so?
Like these Romans, who knew that earthly life was never to be purified well enough to the point of heavenly existence, yet felt comforted by the illusion of closeness between the two lives during the intermission of the sacrifice...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
a subjective experience and that's a very frustrating thought -Maybe this need to elevate man-made devices is not merely caused by frustration but for a large part by the need to organize society. Sun dials in early history, the invention and development of clocks are the result of man's wish for efficiency. To get organized. The Book and film about John Harrison's struggle to conquer the longitude problem is fascinating in this context as it is about the struggle to find how time can help to know distance and coordinates. Longitude
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
see also Longitude by Dava Sobel.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
I've read the book of Rupert Gould, but I see the movie (BBC serial) was written by Dava Sobel and Charles Sturridge. I kept them on video (two cassettes) and must have watched it 4 or 5 times. Really captivating. Though Michael Gambon in the advertisement is not mentioned as Star, he as John Harrison is great in this sea clock epic. imo. TV
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 677
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 677 |
and as a clever scientist proved time passes quicker at the top of a ladder and slower in a basement/cellar...time is relative to space...again I push The Forever War by Joe Haldeman as a brilliant explanation of the difficulties of time relative to the space (and actual space  ) you are in...time is, after all, the fourth dimension...
----The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false----
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
I've made a note for when I finish the Master and Margarita. (Where there's also some juggling with dimensions going on) 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
Bran, are you reading M and M in English? if so, which translation?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7
stranger
|
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7 |
Maybe this need to elevate man-made devices is not merely caused by frustration but for a large part by the need to organize society. Sun dials in early history, the invention and development of clocks are the result of man's wish for efficiency. To get organized. The Book and film about John Harrison's struggle to conquer the longitude problem is fascinating in this context as it is about the struggle to find how time can help to know distance and coordinates. Longitude
Good point, BranShea. I suppose though that earlier history rulers were more preoccupied with organizing their power in respect to other nations than the more contemporary notion of efficiency. The progress of scientific principles, after all, was always driven by few interested individuals backed up by some equally interested elite, should such have been present. The understanding that these principles could be applied to society, the understanding that a society could be kept under control when made and kept better off rather than worse off is a relatively new concept, no?
Will deffinetely check out 'Longitude', hadn't heard of the book or the film. Daniel Kehlmann's 'Measuring the world' comes to mind, though it's a fiction novel.
M & M is a beautiful book. Speaking of filming versions, there is a lot of controversy and peculiar turn of fate around the struggles to adapt it to the screen...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7
stranger
|
|
OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 7 |
Reading the Pleonasm thread, it would seem that 'fiction novel' made me 'guilty' of a pleonastic mistake...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
No, Russian translations I read in Dutch. Though if it were poetry I might prefer English. Dutch is not a very poetical language. We have no really great poets.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
Efficiency is not a really good word I know, for the more complex thing I meant to say. I think man has invented clocks and mesure devices to be able to understand one another on the matter of space and time. Like we developped language for communication, understanding and organising. I know there is much more to it, but I'm not in the position to work it out. Here is a YouTube movie of M and M , I watched the first part (I think the whole series takes hours) and then I wanted to read the book first. I will watch the rest of this Russian movie when I'm done with the book. M & M
Last edited by BranShea; 08/09/11 10:08 PM.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Reading the Pleonasm thread, it would seem that 'fiction novel' made me 'guilty' of a pleonastic mistake... Not really. It just underlines the fact that the novel is not autobiographical in nature or otherwise based on a real incident.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,412
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
0 members (),
907
guests, and
3
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
