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instantaneous

UK/ɪnstənˈteɪni.əs/US/ɪnstənˈteɪni.əs/
adjectiveC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,956 of 15,258neutral

Instantaneous means happening in the same instant, with no delay. An instantaneous response, instantaneous death, instantaneously.

Nothing is literally instantaneous, since no signal travels faster than light, but the word is used for anything too fast to notice. In news reports, instantaneous death is a phrase said to families and is meant kindly rather than measured.

Definitions of instantaneous

  1. 1adjectiveinstantaneousHappening in the same instant, with no delay.C2

    “The effect of the painkiller was almost instantaneous.”

instantaneous is a quality of speed.

Where it comes from

New Latin instantaneus comes from Latin instans, present or urgent, from instare, to stand upon.

  1. New Latin

    īnstāntāneus

  2. English, today

    instantaneous

From New Latin īnstāntāneus. From New Latin īnstāntāneus, from Latin instans.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

instantaneous in the wild

  • The derivative is often described as the instantaneous rate of change, the ratio of the instantaneous change in the dependent variable to that of the independent variable.

    Derivative

  • In an electric circuit, instantaneous power is the time rate of flow of energy past a given point of the circuit.

    AC power

  • The instantaneous frequency is the temporal rate of change of the instantaneous phase.

    Instantaneous phase and frequency

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.