# moment

Pronunciation: say "MOH-muhnt" US /ˈmoʊmənt/, UK /ˈməʊmənt/

## Noun

1. A specific point in time, thought of as a single instant.
   - Simple: An exact point in time when something happens.
   - _He knew the moment had come to make his decision._
   - _From the moment of takeoff, the flight was perfectly smooth._
2. A brief, unspecified amount of time; a short while.
   - Simple: A very short amount of time that is not exactly measured.
   - _Give me a moment to gather my thoughts before we begin._
   - _For a moment, the whole room fell completely silent._
3. A period when a person or thing is at the peak of public attention and admiration. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A time when someone or something is very popular and gets lots of attention.
   - _The young director is having a moment after her film swept the awards._
   - _Plant-based food is having a moment, with new vegan cafes opening every month._
4. A brief fit of strong emotion, such as anger or distress. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A short time when someone suddenly gets very upset or angry.
   - _Dad had a moment when he saw the dent in the car._
   - _I had a little moment after reading the bad news, but I'm fine now._
6. An embarrassing event regarded as typical of a particular person, group, or situation.
   - Simple: An embarrassing thing someone does that seems typical of them or their group.
   - _Posting that typo to the whole company was a peak intern moment._
   - _I had a senior moment and put the milk in the cupboard._
7. Importance or weight; the significance attached to something.
   - Simple: The importance, weight, or seriousness that something carries.
   - _These are questions of real moment to the entire community._
   - _He treated the dispute as a matter of no moment whatsoever._
5. Short for moment of force: the turning effect of a force about a point, equal to the force times its perpendicular distance from that point. — Ellipsis of moment of force.
   - Simple: Short for moment of force: the turning push a force gives around a point.
   - _Engineers calculated the moment acting on the beam at its support._
   - _A longer wrench gives you a bigger moment on a stuck bolt._
8. A quantitative measure describing the shape of a set of points or a distribution.
   - Simple: A number that describes the shape or spread of a set of values.
   - _The second moment about the mean equals the variance of the distribution._
   - _Higher-order moments capture skewness and the heaviness of the tails._
10. A petit mal or absence seizure that briefly interrupts awareness. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A short pause in awareness caused by a mild kind of seizure.
   - _The boy has epilepsy, and in class he sometimes has a moment where he stops responding for a few seconds._
   - _Doctors confirmed that her brief moments were absence seizures._

## Noun

9. An infinitely small increase or decrease in a quantity that is varying. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A tiny change in a quantity that is changing.

## Other meanings

- (noun) A particular point or small spot in space.
- (noun) A historical unit of time equal to one-tenth of a point, or roughly a fortieth of an hour.

## Origin

This word comes from Latin "mōmentum," passing through Old French "moment" and Middle English "moment." It is a doublet of "momentum" and "movement."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/moment (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).