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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

kairos en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /-oʊs/
  • /ˈkaɪɹɒs/
  • /ˈkɛə-/
  • (General-American) audio

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek καιρός (kairós).

Meanings

  1. A time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action; the opportune and decisive moment.
    • Kairos is not measurable. Kairos is ontological. In kairos we are, we are fully in isness, not negatively, as Sartre saw the isness of the oak tree, but fully, wholly, positively. 1972, Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals), San Francisco: Harper & Row, →ISBN, page 245:
    • The—so-called! friends—rational world. If only they, Mom&Dad&Buddy&Sis, dear-but-square ones, could but know the kairos, the supreme moment… 1968, Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →OCLC, page 129:
    • It is a confrontation and invasion of the eternal into the temporal, what Paul Tillich also refers to in the biblical term kairos as distinguished from chronos or common linear time. Kairos is time qualified by eternal relevance, time that is of significance to the Eternal because it is disturbed by and invested with the eternal. 1980, Howard Alexander Slaatte, Time And Its End, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, →ISBN, page 87:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
kairós alternative lexicographic
kairoi Number=Plur lexicographic

Coordinates

chronos

Deriveds

kairotic

Relateds

aedium · aptum · decorum