WordGarden.iotemporality
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Meanings
Noun
the quality of existing in or being limited by time
a particular way time is structured, experienced, or represented
Beyond the definition
Temporality is not just about time; it is about how things exist within time and how that shapes their meaning. Think about a photograph: it captures a moment, but it also reminds us that moments pass.
The word often appears in philosophy, literature, and physics when people talk about how reality is shaped by change, aging, and endings. A story's power can depend on its temporality: the order in which events unfold can create suspense or nostalgia. A building's temporality can refer to its lifespan and to how it changes over time. You might also say an artist "plays with temporality" by changing the usual sense of past, present, and future in a work.
Temporality is a complex concept that explores the quality of being related to time and how our understanding of existence is fundamentally shaped by it. It's not simply time itself—we measure time in hours and days—but rather the way time affects everything within it.
Think about memory: memories aren't static recordings; they are reconstructions filtered through the temporality of your life, changing with each retelling. In literature, a novel's power often comes from its manipulation of temporality—flashbacks, foreshadowing, and shifts in narrative pace all play with how we experience time alongside the characters.
Philosophers use "temporality" to discuss our subjective experience of time—how it feels fast or slow depending on our emotions and activities. Physicists explore temporality when considering concepts like relativity and the arrow of time (why time seems to move in one direction). Historians analyze the temporality of events, understanding that interpretations change as we gain distance from them.
The word is rarely used in everyday conversation, but you'll encounter it frequently in academic or artistic contexts where exploring the nature of time and its impact on experience is central. It's about recognizing that everything—objects, people, ideas—is subject to the flow of time and carries within it a history and a future. So when something has temporality, it exists in time, and its meaning is inextricably linked to that existence.
Examples
- 1
Narrative time
The novel’s temporality is confusing at first, with scenes from three different decades.
- 2
Performance
Live theater has a different temporality from film because each performance exists only once.
- 3
Emotional experience
The researcher was interested in the temporality of grief, especially how some days feel much longer than others.
- 4
Daily routines
The project brought together people with very different temporalities, from night-shift workers to parents of young children.
- Phrasedifferent temporalities
different ways of organizing daily time
See also
Similar
- temporal quality
- temporal nature
- time-boundness
Contrast
- timelessness
- eternity
Used with (collocations)
- human temporality
- narrative temporality
- temporality of experience
Word family
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Forms and spellings
1 form open this card.
Main spelling
- temporalitynoun