The word is still used in modern Greek to denote time. For example, you can say "καιρός να κόψω το τσιγάρο" to say that it's a good time for you to quit smoking.
And just for laughs, Greece being a country driven by tourism has many people who would attempt to communicate with tourists in English. As such, we have humorous mistranslations poking fun in those who try to speak English by translating the Greek phrase word for word, like "do you have weather for coffee?" because the Greek sentence is "έχεις καιρό για καφέ;" which can also easily be interpreted as "can you find an opening in your schedule to go for a cup of coffee with me?"
Middle English tempeste, borrowed from Anglo-French, going back to Vulgar Latin tempesta, replacing Latin tempestāt-, tempestās “stretch of time, period, season, weather, stormy weather”
I love when different languages use one word to mean seemingly unrelated (or at most tangentially related) things, but in the same way.
In French the word for time is also used for weather, e.g. "Le temps est nuageux" is "The weather is cloudy" and "Y a-t-il assez de temps" is "Is there enough time?".
Fascinating, I love checking HN on Sundays for these more obscure topics that pop up.
Was it primarily used only in formal language? Or if it was used as everyday language, is there any evidence that it affected the way they saw time, in a Sapir-Whorf type way?
I'd argue that there's no reason that these two ideas should be conflated in the same word. Surely languages other than ancient Greek make this distinction?
That's cool, so it seems like chronos and kairos seem to respectively come from more objective and subjective sides of looking at things. Like comparing the concept of atomic time with concepts like "go time" or "high time" or even "Miller time".
The various definitions and examples seem to attempt to bring the term into objectivity by hinting at the clear and immediate downside risk of not paying due attention to kairos, but I wonder if there have been a lot of impatient people out there who have been frustrated with e.g. their elders advising more kairos-style heed be given and more waiting be endured, in vague, frustrating situations...
Madeline L’Engle also wrote of Kairos and Chronos in her various books. A Wrinkle in Time and the subsequent three books are called the Time Quartet. The Time Quartet deals with tesseracts, wormholes, and larger universal and existential themes, in what she calls “pure time,” AKA Kairos.
Contrast this with her “normal world” books that take place in the “regular, clock-time” world, AKA Chronos.
A Wrinkle in Time probably shaped my view of the world more than any other book growing up. Kairos has a permanent place in my heart as a result.
Reminds me of the Kairos retreats popular in Catholic high schools. I went to one and it was pretty intense and not in a forced way. Basically 4 day group therapy.
It is still a thing, at least in Brazil afaik. My cousin went to one these retreats the other day, he tried to convince me to go with him but I don't like those. He said it was really intense and very "close to god".
This word was featured prominently in the first sentence of former German foreign minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's PhD thesis, which turned out to have been plagiarized.
This seems like one of those posts where an exoticizing foreigner picks up a perfectly normal word and says it "means" a whole lot of extra things, just because it was used in philosophical texts writing about those things.
From other comments, it's just a distinction between "duration" and "instant". Nothing deep, exists in lots of languages. If you want to get the joy of Greek philosophy, you're going to need the philosophy. It isn't just magically included in the language.
In this case, it's not. We really do use "kairos" to mean "the opportune moment". It's not about instant versus durable, it's never kairos for something that's not supposed to happen now, no matter how instant.
God desires that we make our own choices and then we are shown that reality is still constructed in such a way that all this freedom and these choices intersect to serve his timing.
In that case it's an example of a Germanic vs. Romance/Latin origin, which is quite common in English when you have two related but very different words (e.g. beef via French, while cow is Germanic). The interesting thing here is that the other Germanic languages also have the split, which isn't quite as common, but not unusual.
So you get English brush, German Bürste and Norwegian børste from proto-Germanic origin, and German Pinsel, Norwegian/Swedish pensel and English pencil from Latin via Old French pincel/pincil.
Obviously the meaning diverged, but it makes sense when you consider that a fine paintbrush was also a writing instrument, and so when a lead/graphite stick became common English ended up with a meaning for pencil referencing that writing instrument while e.g. German and Scandinavian (and possibly other Germanic languages but haven't checked) instead picked some variant of "lead pen" (e.g. German Bleistift, Norwegian blyant) for pencil while retaining the "paintbrush" meaning for the latin-derived word.
Ribbonfarm's take on kairos vs chronos: "internal and external clocks [...] individual time and social time, sensed time and read time [...] Bergsonian vs Einsteinian time." And now things that used be synchronized are becoming async, chronological time is bleeding into kairological time.
[+] [-] Arisaka1|4 years ago|reply
And just for laughs, Greece being a country driven by tourism has many people who would attempt to communicate with tourists in English. As such, we have humorous mistranslations poking fun in those who try to speak English by translating the Greek phrase word for word, like "do you have weather for coffee?" because the Greek sentence is "έχεις καιρό για καφέ;" which can also easily be interpreted as "can you find an opening in your schedule to go for a cup of coffee with me?"
[+] [-] sm4rk0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Koshkin|4 years ago|reply
tempest
Middle English tempeste, borrowed from Anglo-French, going back to Vulgar Latin tempesta, replacing Latin tempestāt-, tempestās “stretch of time, period, season, weather, stormy weather”
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|4 years ago|reply
In French the word for time is also used for weather, e.g. "Le temps est nuageux" is "The weather is cloudy" and "Y a-t-il assez de temps" is "Is there enough time?".
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blowski|4 years ago|reply
Was it primarily used only in formal language? Or if it was used as everyday language, is there any evidence that it affected the way they saw time, in a Sapir-Whorf type way?
[+] [-] nerdponx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyriakos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themodelplumber|4 years ago|reply
The various definitions and examples seem to attempt to bring the term into objectivity by hinting at the clear and immediate downside risk of not paying due attention to kairos, but I wonder if there have been a lot of impatient people out there who have been frustrated with e.g. their elders advising more kairos-style heed be given and more waiting be endured, in vague, frustrating situations...
[+] [-] futuretile|4 years ago|reply
“The perfect moment” is how my professor described it
[+] [-] nhod|4 years ago|reply
Contrast this with her “normal world” books that take place in the “regular, clock-time” world, AKA Chronos.
A Wrinkle in Time probably shaped my view of the world more than any other book growing up. Kairos has a permanent place in my heart as a result.
[+] [-] willdearden|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] birtoise|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carvking|4 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/FvLe4BuU-NM?t=2877 https://youtu.be/Jbwm03djuJc?t=34
[+] [-] marton78|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttepasse|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nez2BdCqVA
[+] [-] azernik|4 years ago|reply
From other comments, it's just a distinction between "duration" and "instant". Nothing deep, exists in lots of languages. If you want to get the joy of Greek philosophy, you're going to need the philosophy. It isn't just magically included in the language.
[+] [-] exolymph|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stavros|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobthechef|4 years ago|reply
I wonder what you'd say about λόγος.
[+] [-] greatNespresso|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kosasbest|4 years ago|reply
Think of the Dotcom boom when people were snapping up three letter .com domains and retiring early after selling them.
[+] [-] huhtenberg|4 years ago|reply
https://www.zyme.it/en/prodotti/kairos
[+] [-] unknown_apostle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woah|4 years ago|reply
Bürste is a brush that one might use for scrubbing, while Pinsel is a paintbrush, usually with a pointed tip.
[+] [-] vidarh|4 years ago|reply
So you get English brush, German Bürste and Norwegian børste from proto-Germanic origin, and German Pinsel, Norwegian/Swedish pensel and English pencil from Latin via Old French pincel/pincil.
Obviously the meaning diverged, but it makes sense when you consider that a fine paintbrush was also a writing instrument, and so when a lead/graphite stick became common English ended up with a meaning for pencil referencing that writing instrument while e.g. German and Scandinavian (and possibly other Germanic languages but haven't checked) instead picked some variant of "lead pen" (e.g. German Bleistift, Norwegian blyant) for pencil while retaining the "paintbrush" meaning for the latin-derived word.
[+] [-] pierremenard|4 years ago|reply
https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/stream-time
[+] [-] yodon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scoopertrooper|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaaaaaaaaaab|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] khimaros|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|4 years ago|reply
chronos: what time is it?
kairos: what is this time for?
[+] [-] gulda|4 years ago|reply
https://editorialkairos.com/
was founded inspired by the concept
[+] [-] pachico|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motohagiography|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rossdavidh|4 years ago|reply