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
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.
Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr. Examples of standard time in a Sentence
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According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, daylight saving time, or DST, is the concept of moving clocks forward one hour from standard time during the summer and then moving them back in the fall.
—Dina Kaur, AZCentral.com, 12 Aug. 2025
The Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, which was created to make daylight saving time the new, permanent standard time, was unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate in 2022, but it was not passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
—Katie Wiseman, IndyStar, 11 Aug. 2025
The dispute lies on whether to stick with standard time, which in this country runs from the first Sunday in November until the second Sunday in March, or embrace year-long daylight saving time.
—Jorge L. Ortiz, USA Today, 19 July 2025
From Pan Am to Space Speeding across the skies at several hundred miles per hour, pilots and air crews needed a system to track both local and Greenwich Mean Time, the Prime Meridian (as decided in 1884), and the standard time of air traffic controllers in the 1950s.
—Oren Hartov, Robb Report, 28 Mar. 2025
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Dina Kaur, AZCentral.com, 12 Aug. 2025
The Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, which was created to make daylight saving time the new, permanent standard time, was unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate in 2022, but it was not passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
—Katie Wiseman, IndyStar, 11 Aug. 2025
The dispute lies on whether to stick with standard time, which in this country runs from the first Sunday in November until the second Sunday in March, or embrace year-long daylight saving time.
—Jorge L. Ortiz, USA Today, 19 July 2025
From Pan Am to Space Speeding across the skies at several hundred miles per hour, pilots and air crews needed a system to track both local and Greenwich Mean Time, the Prime Meridian (as decided in 1884), and the standard time of air traffic controllers in the 1950s.
—Oren Hartov, Robb Report, 28 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for standard time
Cite this Entry
“Standard time.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/standard%20time. Accessed 31 Aug. 2025.
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