standard time

noun

: the time of a region or country that is established by law or general usage as civil time (see civil sense 5)

… the advent of the railway system and its demand for accurate timetables created the need for standard time and GMT became the legal standard time of Britain in 1880.

—John Sallnow

specifically : the mean time of a meridian that is a multiple of 15 arbitrarily applied to a local area or to one of the 24 time zones and designated as a number of hours earlier or later than Greenwich Mean Time

At a little after nine Central Standard Time on the night of Monday, April 13, 1970 there was, high in the western sky, a tiny flare of light that in some respects resembled a star exploding far away in our galaxy.

—Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr.

Examples of standard time in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The Uniform Time Act allows states to choose whether to participate in daylight saving time or stay in standard time all year. —Hannah Poukish september 23, Sacbee.com, 23 Sep. 2025

The law also established a standard time and allowed the federal government to create five time zones. —Haadiza Ogwude, Cincinnati Enquirer, 23 Sep. 2025

Eighteen states have passed bills opting to adopt daylight saving time as the permanent standard time. —Eleanor Nash, Kansas City Star, 16 Sep. 2025

Proponents of permanent standard time, meanwhile, argue that more morning light is optimal for health, which has been endorsed by organizations like the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the National Sleep Foundation and the American Medical Association. —Hannah Millington, MSNBC Newsweek, 15 Sep. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1809, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for standard time

• aforetime
• allozyme
• anytime
• christmastime
• cybercrime
• dinnertime
• guggenheim
• isozyme
• lysozyme
• maritime
• mesenchyme
• overtime

Kids Definition

standard time

noun

: the time established by law or by general usage over a region or country