time warp

noun
1.
a hypothetical eccentricity in the progress of time that would allow movement back and forth between eras or that would permit the passage of time to be suspended.
Origin
1950-55
Examples from the web for time warp
  • But the current war can make tribes seem as if they belong in a time warp.
  • Transplants from the corporate world might have concluded they were in a time warp.
  • What is in play is that all light from all galaxies is bent by the space-time warp of gravity.
  • The profession at times has seemed to be lost in a time warp.
  • The second is that the air traffic control system has been sort of locked in a time warp.
British Dictionary definitions for time warp

time warp

noun
1.
any distortion of space-time
2.
a hypothetical distortion of time in which people and events from one age can be imagined to exist in another age
3.
(informal) an illusion in which time appears to stand still: he is living in a time warp
Slang definitions & phrases for time warp

time warp

noun phrase

A blank, an inordinate rapidity or slowness, a blatant discontinuity, a seeming anachronism, or some other anomaly of time: The case of five people indicted more than four years ago has been ''lost in a time warp'' of delays, state prosecutors say

[1954+; fr science-fiction notions of instantaneous eons and the like, devised to legitimize travel over enormous distances within conceivable and dramatically useful periods of time, and based on Albert Einstein's concept of ''curved space'']


Idioms and Phrases with time warp

time warp

A stoppage in the passage of time; also, a distortion of time whereby an event or person could hypothetically move from one era to another. For example, Nothing in their lives has changed since the sixties; they're in a time warp, or Having a seventy-year-old actress portray a teenager—that was some time warp! This term originated in science fiction, where it signifies “a supernatural movement from one era to another,” and came to be used more loosely. [ c. 1950 ]