epoch

Pluralepochs

1. 1
   period in historynouncountable

   A period of time in history or in someone's life, especially an important or special one.

   We are living in an epoch of fast changes in technology.

   Her time at college was an exciting epoch in her life.

   UsagePeople say a new epoch. Epoch-making means very important.

   Similarera, age

2. 2
   geologynouncountable

   A unit of Earth's history, part of a larger period, lasting anywhere from thousands to many millions of years.

   We are living in the Holocene epoch, which began after the last ice age.

   Different epochs left different kinds of rock and fossils behind.

   UsageIn geology, put the name first: the Holocene epoch.

   Note
3. 3
   zero pointnouncountable

   A chosen moment in time that a system uses as its starting point for counting time.

   The computer stores each date as the number of seconds since its epoch.

   Different programs use different epochs, so the same number can mean different dates.

   Note
4. 4
   training passnouncountable

   One full pass in which a computer program that learns goes through all of its training data.

   We trained the program for ten epochs, and it got better each time.

   After the first epoch, the program could already recognize some of the cats.

   Note

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