Epochal spiked on June 12th, 2018, following the meeting in Singapore of President Trump and Kim Jong Un. The word was used in the joint statement released following the meeting:
Having acknowledged that the US-DPRK summit — the first in history — was an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulation in this joint statement fully and expeditiously.
Epochal is the adjectival form of epoch, which came through Latin from the Greek word meaning cessation or fixed point. It originally referred to an event that marked the beginning of a new period of time (similar in meaning to era), but has come to mean, more broadly, “a memorable event or date.” Despite the ancient roots of the word, epochal in its modern use dates only to the mid-1800s in English.
