second
- noun
- /ˈsɛkənd/
- Informal
- close your eyes for a couple of seconds, Eliza.
- a few seconds
- split second
- fraction of a second
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Watch on YouTubeSo let's just take a second and close our eyes.
- So let's just take a second and close our eyes.
- How did you not think, oh, wait a second, this feels more right?
- To say you don't fool me for a second, you're opaque.
- And he said, wait a second, that's what I do.
- It is a less than a second frame that changes.
- That's amazing because the second he said, why did you say that?
- I'm going to just start for a second with why it's hard.
- And I thought maybe for a second, maybe she's dead.
Examples
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OK, now you might say wait a second, why?
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Just take that one second to turn your head and look.
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And that took what, a second less than a second?
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Whoa, whoa, wait a second... what are we talking about here?
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Note that 30 seconds is a very short amount of time to get a message across.
Academic text (2008) -
So let's just take a second and close our eyes.
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That will last about two seconds.
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For about 15 seconds there, we were actually playing tennis, and we understood each other completely.
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I'm going to go to the bookstore for a second
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Just take that one second to turn your head and look.
Synonyms
A small piece or amount of something, for example food
A very short time or a particular point in time
A very short moment that passes quickly
A very short moment when something happens
A very short time like a moment
A very short time, like a moment, used in informal speech
A very short time, like a few moments
Antonyms
Idioms
- Informal
A person who has a less important role and helps someone more important
Compounds
A child of your parent's first cousin who shares your great-grandparents but not your grandparents
A player who stands near second base and catches or throws the ball to get runners out
A junior officer with the lowest rank in the Army, Air Force, or Marine Corps
A meeting of Catholic Church leaders from 1962 to 1965 that changed worship and encouraged talks with other Christian churches
- Specialized
Energy naturally spreads from hot places to cold ones, increasing disorder
A measure of speed that shows how many kilometers something moves in one second
An upper seating area at the back of a theatre with the least expensive seats
A woman who cares for someone like a mother, often with or instead of their own mother
- Specialized
Words that refer to the person or people you speak to, for example 'you'
- Specialized
A stomach part in animals like cows that helps break down plant food
- Archaic
A period in old age when mental decline makes a person behave like a young child
- Specialized
A unit that shows how many small pieces of information called bits are sent every second
- Specialized
A rule that says how a force makes an object move faster depending on its mass
- Specialized
A rule that a force changes an object's motion more when the force is bigger or the object is lighter
- Specialized
The distance light travels in one second in empty space, about 300,000 kilometers
- Jargon
A system or tool that stores information to help you remember and organize things
- Specialized
An extra second added to clocks so they match how fast the Earth turns
A war between China and Japan from 1894 to 1895 that ended in a clear Japanese victory
A military campaign by European Christians in the 1100s to take back the Holy Land that failed because leaders fought
- Specialized
A unit for measuring how fast a computer processor runs, equal to one million instructions per second
A church meeting in 787 that stopped destroying religious images and allowed their use in worship
How Long
Surface Forms
Etymology
Second as 'a very short time' comes from the time unit second, used here as a quick, informal way to say 'a moment', so saying 'I'll be there in a second' means 'in a short while'.