"How long is a "moment", actually."

Asked by lizita 27 months ago

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I remember hearing this question a long time ago, and do remember the answer...which surprised me. Anyone want to wager a guess?


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"Moment"
 by Lady_Wolf_waves_hi on Oct 30 2007 (27 months ago)
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Before I did any research I thought a moment was less than a second.  Now I know I was wrong.  The reason I thought this is the intro to a song I know mislead me.  Right before the characters in Hello Dolly start singing It Only Takes A Moment the lines are...

Cornelius:  No, I didn't fall in love in love with Miss Irene Malloy of this city in just a day.  It was much quicker than that.  Ah hour-- No, even that's too long!  What's less than a minute?

Man:  A second?

Cornelius:  Less than that!

Woman:  A moment.

Cornelius:  That's it!   That is it!

Cornelius's passionate declarations made me think that a moment was indeed a split second.  In reality...

A moment is actually a medieval unit of time equal to 1/40 hour or 1.5 minutes or 90 seconds.  Of course now it means a short period of time.
Sources: http://www.unc.edu/%7Erowlett/units/dictM.html

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The moment measurement is wrong, but I enjoy it nonetheless!
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"An "instant"!"
 by MarshallO on Oct 26 2007 (27 months ago)
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A "moment" is the infinitesimally small "instant" of time that you pass through on your way to your next moment.  That's why life is called "living moment to moment",

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"A moment is a span of time waiting for something. It lasts as long as it takes for the thing to happen."
 by Manimal on Oct 29 2007 (27 months ago)
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When you are asked to "wait a moment", it usually means, "wait until this other event occurs". You may not know what that event is or how long it will take. It is also possible that the event never takes place and you stop waiting and give up.

 

A moment is a non-specific length of time to wait for a separate event to occur. I hope this helps.
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"Longer than an instant but not quite a second. That's just my best guess."
 by Pooka on Oct 30 2007 (27 months ago)
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"According to the great and powerful Wikipedia:"
 by EmpressPixie on Nov 01 2007 (27 months ago)
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And I quote (the entire article):
A moment, in context with time, is an indefinitely short period of time. Sometimes defined as zero seconds long.

So zero seconds would be the actual measure.  That's their entire article on Moment(time).  I thought it was really funny in how completely short it is. 

My guess (prior to checking out wikipedia) was: an indefinite amount of time between a second and a minute.  Wikipedia says I'm wrong.  Do you?
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_%28time%29
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