Let’s take a couple of minutes of your ‘time’ to talk about chron, the Greek root word for ‘time.’
Ever owned a Timex? Yes, you knew I was talking about watches, that is, keepers of ‘time.’ Watches are technically chronographs, or writers of ‘time’. The Chrono is one of Timex’s all-‘time’ bestsellers, meant to keep accurate ‘time’ to keep you on ‘time.’ In the same vein, some watches have stopwatches or chronometers, which measure how much ‘time’ has elapsed during an event.
Ever watched synchronized swimmers in the Olympics? They all make their moves at the same ‘time.’ Synchronous events, therefore, happen at the same ‘time.’
You may have encountered the Greek god Chronos during your mythology studies, who was the god of ‘time.’ He is the origin of our depiction of Father ‘Time,’ and was often pictured with wings since ‘time’ tends to fly by.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis is a very popular series that you’ve probably read or watched. A chronicle is a record of historical events that happen over ‘time.’ Chronicles are kept in chronological order, that is, arranging events in the correct ‘time’ sequence in which they occurred.
Ever watched a film in which there was something out of place, like a watch on the wrist of a Roman soldier, or a car speeding down a street during the Middle Ages? Those are both examples of anachronisms, or things that are placed in the wrong ‘time’ period.
For you computer buffs, there’s a widely used Linux and Mac (UNIX) utility called cron; it manages how programs run, using a special syntax for specifying ‘time.’
People with acute symptoms of disease suffer for only a short time, but those with chronic ailments suffer over an extended period of ‘time.’ Hopefully neither you nor any of your cronies, or friends whom you have known for a long ‘time,’ are so afflicted!
Well, to keep ‘in sync,’ or synchronized with the ‘time’ restraints for this podcast and blog, I’ll leave you in a ’time’ly fashion, lest Chronos swing his sickle and cut off my ‘time’ for me!
- chronograph: writer of ‘time’
- chronometer: instrument that measures ‘time’
- synchronized: happens at the same ‘time’
- chronicle: events in ‘time’
- chronological: ‘time’ sequence
- anachronism: wrong ‘time’
- chronic: pertaining to ‘time’
- crony: friend over ‘time’