Epic vs epoch

Photo of author

Grammarist

An epic is a long poem, usually a story or ballad of ancient oral tradition that speaks about the adventures and deeds of a hero or legend. An epic may also refer to any long, narrative poem with the same style, structure and importance. Epic has also been applied to films, books or plays with the heroic quality of an epic. Epic also functions as an adjective, referring to something that is grand, imposing or heroic. The adverb form is epically. Epic first appears in the last part of the sixteenth century meaning pertaining to or constituting a lengthy heroic poem, coming from the Latin epicus and the Greek epikos, which means a word, a tale, story, promise, prophecy, poetry in heroic verse.

Epoch means a period of history marked by certain characteristics or notable events. In geology, an epoch is a subdivision of a period, epochs are subdivided into ages. The adjective form is epochal, the adverb form is epochally. Epoch appears in the early seventeenth century as epocha, meaning point marking the start of a new period in time. It comes from the Medieval Latin epocha and the Greek epokhe, meaning stoppage, fixed point of time. The geological usage of epoch came about in 1802.

Examples

On Saturday, in San Francisco, is the epic Beer Mile showdown between the three fastest beer milers in history. (The New Yorker)

This epic wedding dance featured all 250 guests hitting the floor (The Mirror)

Describing ‘Ramcharitmanas’ as a great work which imbibes the “essence of India”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today released the digital version of a musical production on the epic recorded by All India Radio. (The New Indian Express)

The world entered a new epoch on July 16 1945 when humans detonated the first atomic bomb, scientists have concluded. (The Telegraph)

Meet the Hasmoneans: A Brief History of a Violent Epoch (Haaretz)

According to the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the professional organization in charge of defining earth’s time scale, we are officially in the Holocene (“entirely recent”) epoch, which began 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age. (The Smithsonian Magazine)

Comments are closed.