timeline

Pluraltimelines

Formstimelines, timelining, timelined

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A schedule listing activities and the times at which they are planned to take place.

   Like a recipe that tells you not just the steps but when to start each one.

   The manager laid out a strict timeline for the product launch.

   Volunteers followed the event timeline to keep each activity on track.

   Similarschedule, timetable

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A graphical representation of events arranged in the order they occur in time, whether past or future.

   Like a road stretched out flat, with each stop marking a moment in history.

   The museum exhibit featured a timeline tracing human migration across continents.

   She sketched a timeline on the whiteboard to map the project's milestones.

   Similarchronology

   Note

   Time plus line, and the line is meant literally: events set along one axis, each at its own point. Its opposite is a timepoint, a single moment rather than the stretch between many. The word travels easily. Drake's "Energy" (2015) uses it for a feed of posts and friends' pictures, and Andrew Mourant's "no timeline in place for reopening" (2023) already means the schedule meaning.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An individual universe or reality, especially a parallel or alternate one in which events differ from actual history or from a fictional world's established canon.

   Like branches splitting off a tree trunk, each branch a separate version of what could have been.

   The comic reveals that the two heroes come from separate timelines that briefly merge.

   By changing one decision, the character splits off into an entirely new timeline.

   Similarreality, universe

   Note

   Science fiction's word for a whole history that can branch, collapse or be rewritten. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Children of Time" (1997), Worf warns that avoiding an accident means "your timeline will collapse", and he means the characters' entire reality, not a chart. The usual collocation is alternate timeline. Fans also use it for a version of a story that departs from canon. Timestream and time track are its synonyms within the genre.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To display a chronological sequence of events in graphical form.

   The software will timeline each milestone across the project's full duration.

   Researchers timelined the eruption's phases to show how the pressure built.

   Similarchart, plot

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To examine a sequence of events or activities in order to understand how they unfold.

   Investigators timelined the network breach to determine how the attackers moved.

   Analysts timeline each transaction before drawing any conclusions about the fraud.

   Note

   The noun turned verb takes regular forms: timelines, timelining, timelined. Here the work is analytical, reconstructing what happened and in what order, as investigators do with a breach. It shares its spelling with the drawing sense, and context tells them apart: this one ends in understanding, that one in a picture.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5