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Word of the Day – Thursday, July 14th

 


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AEON (EE-on)

An immeasurably long period of time
Common clues:
Long, long time; Many millennia; Ages and ages; A billion years; Seemingly forever; Semi-eternity?; Big time?; Long period
Crossword puzzle frequency: 3 times a year
Frequency in English language: 61621 / 86800
Video:
Linda Ronstadt – Long Long Time


The word aeon, also spelled eon or æon, originally means "life", and/or "being", though it then tended to mean "age", "forever" or "for eternity". In Homer it typically refers to life or lifespan. Its latest meaning is more or less similar to the Sanskrit word kalpa and Hebrew word olam. A cognate Latin word aevum or aeuum for "age" is present in words such as longevity and mediæval.


Although the term aeon may be used in reference to a period of a billion years (especially in geology, cosmology or astronomy), its more common usage is for any long, indefinite, period of time.


Ancient sundial from Marcianopolis


Roger Penrose uses the word aeon to describe the period between successive and cyclic big bangs within the context of conformal cyclic cosmology. In this theory, the remote future of the previous aeons becomes the Big Bang of the current aeon





This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Aeon".