timelines

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of timeline.

   The report included parallel timelines for each department's milestones.

   Historians sometimes reconcile conflicting timelines drawn from different sources.

   Note

   A regular -s plural that carries all three of the noun's meanings: charts of events, schedules of work, and separate realities, such as an alternate history or a branch that departs from a fictional world's canon. The plural suits that last meaning well, since alternate realities rarely come singly. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, so a subject directly before it marks the verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of timeline.

   The software timelines each task automatically as soon as a deadline is entered.

   Our editor timelines the footage so that interviews align with the events they describe.

   Note

   The verb covers two close jobs. One is working out the order of events or tasks. The other is laying that order out visually, as an editor does with footage. Only he, she and it take this -s form. Every other present-tense subject uses the bare verb: they timeline, I timeline. Context usually shows whether analysis or display is meant, and often it is both.

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