Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy A point from which one has an unrestricted perspective in time (see quotation from 1996).

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

no + when, by analogy with nowhere. See quotation from 1996.

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Examples

  • The null item would have to exist “nowhere and nowhen”, said Geach (1949: 522), or perhaps “everywhere and everywhen”, and that is hard to swallow.

    Wild Dreams Of Reality, 3 2009

  • If you don't believe in either the past or the future, there's nowhere and nowhen for any ˜missing™ parts to be.

    Temporal Parts Hawley, Katherine 2004

  • Not in the depths of the Underworld, nor the rustling mysterious branches of Yggdrasil, drowned coral palace of shark-toothed Nan, monster-haunted caverns of Xibalba, infinite intricate rooms-within-rooms where dwelt the Jade Emperor, storms and stars and immensities commanded by Yahweh ... nowhere, nowhen had he met an eeriness like that which encompassed him; and he knew that the world in truth stood on the rim of a new age, or of an abyss.

    The Unicorn Trade Anderson, Poul and Karen 1984

  • If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'.

    The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell 1921

  • But I have none, I am the do-nothing self, the one who sits in the dumb, empty nowhere and nowhen, while you are busy re-creating life.

    The Madman Khalil Gibran 1907

  • "You," he adds, "who live for something which never is, but always is _to be_, are like a traveller, who casts off, in every country he passes through, the covering that will be too warm for him in the next; and is comfortable nowhen and nowhere."

    A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) Sutherland Orr 1865

  • But the war's still going on, dear, and there's nowhen that I know

    NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias 2009

  • My sympathies are currently with the Palestians -- because nowhen and nowhere should children ever be harmed in regards to politics.

    World Blog 2009

  • Providences, I believe in them so much, that I believe that the whole universe, and all that has ever happened in it from the beginning, has happened by special Providences; that not an organic being has assumed its present form, after long ages and generations, save by a continuous series of special Providences; that not a weed grows in a particular spot, without a special Providence of God that it should grow there, and nowhere else; then, and nowhen else.

    Westminster Sermons with a Preface Charles Kingsley 1847

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