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

Under current law, states are only allowed to stay permanently on standard time. —Holden Rodgers, Kansas City Star, 15 May 2025

This is the argument of biologist professor Carla Finkelstein of Virginia Tech and her colleagues at the Society for Research in Biological Rhythms, who advocate for the elimination of DST in favor of permanent standard time. —William Lambers, Newsweek, 9 Mar. 2025

All first-class mail will continue to be delivered within the standard time frame of one to five days. —Gordon G. Chang, MSNBC Newsweek, 8 Apr. 2025

This contradicts standard advice, but these aren’t standard times: Focus on saving only one month of expenses, then pour all other resources into the debt. —Amy Lindgren, Twin Cities, 5 Apr. 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