temporicide

English

Etymology

From Latin temporis (“time”) +‎ -icide.

Pronunciation

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

Noun

temporicide (countable and uncountable, plural temporicides)

1. The act of killing time.
   • 1851, Chambers W. and R., ltd, Chambers's papers for the people, page 9:

     Fancy Isaac Newton, with the confused elements of a 'Principia' circulating in his brain, constrained to write installation odes or opera criticisms for the 'Morning Post;' or fancy, if you will, some impetuous rhinoceros set to draw water from the well at Carisbrook Castle, in the place of the celebrated donkey so long accustomed to it; and you will have some notion of Fichte's tragical labour of writing tragedies and short romantic stories, adaptable for purposes of temporicide.

   • 1866, Leo Hartley Grindon, Life: Its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena, page 435:

     In the "Illustrated London News" for February, 1855, and again in the "Art Journal" for March, 1857, there are drawings by Mr. Glaisher, of the Greenwich Observatory, of no less than thirty-two varieties discovered in his own neighborhood, and doubtless many more may be found, and in any part of the country, if diligently sought, providing a Christmas and New-year's pleasure for the intelligent such as will outweigh whole nights of the mere temporicide popularly esteemed the beau-idéal of winter pastime.

   • 1880, Edward James Mortimer Collins, Edmund Hodgson Yates, Thoughts in my garden:

     D., who would catch the tide, G., with his notions wide, Each is temporicide — Time's reckless murderer:

   • 2019, Arthur Bradley, Unbearable Life: A Genealogy of Political Erasure:

     To become truly sovereign, Macbeth recognizes from the very beginning that it is not enough to merely commit regicide, he must also perform a kind of temporicide: an act of time killing.