Dictionary

Zulu time en · NOUN

Etymology

From the name for the letter Z in the ICAO spelling alphabet, a reference to the equivalent nautical time zone (GMT), which has been denoted by a Z since about 1950. See the list of military time zones.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) Coordinated Universal Time.
   • The aviation standard is Zulu time, which is essentially the same as Greenwich mean time (GMT) and Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). 2012, Jeff Van West, Kevin Lane-Cummings, Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 101:
   • What everyone knows is that between zero three fifteen and twelve seconds and thirteen seconds Zulu time, on October second, ’sixty-two, all the clocks stopped, the satellites went away, the star map changed, nineteen airliners and forty-six ships in transit ended up in terminal trouble, and they found themselves transferred from a globe in the Milky Way galaxy to a disk which we figure is somewhere in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. 2009, Charles Stross, Wireless, Penguin, →ISBN:
   • Aviation has long used Zulu time as the standard so that no matter which time zone you're in, you know what time it is. 2008, Carol Pollard, Reynaldo Anzaldua, Computer Forensics For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 208:

Forms

Relateds

military time

Synonyms

Z time