Recent

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See also: recent and récent

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

As classifier for a geological epoch coinciding with human presence (“Recent era”) introduced by Charles Lyell in 1833.[1]

Proper noun[edit]

Recent

  1. (obsolete, geology) The Holocene.
    • 2012, Lydia Pyne, Stephen J. Pyne, The Last Lost World, Penguin, →ISBN:
      He [Charles Lyell] ignored Quaternary, a term he never accepted. The Recent addressed the age “tenanted by man,” which at the time barely extended beyond the chronicles of the Bible.

Adjective[edit]

Recent (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete, geology, astronomy) Of the Holocene, particularly pre-21st century.[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Charles Lyell (1833) Principles of Geology, volume III, book IV, page 385: “All formations, whether igneous or aqueous, which can be shown by any such proofs to be of a date posterior to the introduction of man, will be called Recent.”
  2. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. quotes "P. Gibbard & T. van Kolfschoten in F. Gradstein et al. Geol. Time Scale 2004 xxii. 451/2 The term 'Recent' as an alternative to Holocene is invalid and should not be used."
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