Instant
WordNet
adjective
(1) Demanding attention
"Clamant needs"
"A crying need"
"Regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous"- H.L.Mencken
"Insistent hunger"
"An instant need"
(2) In or of the present month
"Your letter of the 10th inst"
noun
(3) A particular point in time
"The moment he arrived the party began"
(4) A very short time (as the time it takes the eye blink or the heart to beat)
"If I had the chance I'd do it in a flash"
WiktionaryText
Adjective
- Occurring, arising, or functioning without any delay; happening within an imperceptibly brief period of time.
Quotations
- 1631, William Twisse, A discovery of D. Iacksons vanitie, ch. 6, p. 223,
- This instantaneous motion is supposed by you, to be infinitely swift.
- 1766, Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 14.
- However, no lovers in romance ever cemented a more instantaneous friendship.
- 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ch. 57,
- The colour now rushed into Elizabeth's cheeks in the instantaneous conviction of its being a letter from the nephew.
- 1907, Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, ch. 4,
- It's the principle of the pneumatic instantaneous shutter for a camera lens.
- 2007, Spector jury given graphic account of actress 'murder' Times Online, London, 30 May (retrieved 13 July 2007),
- He said that the bullet went through her head, severed her spine and death would have been almost instantaneous.