noun
- a hypothetical eccentricity in the progress of time that would allow movement back and forth between eras or that would permit the passage of time to be suspended.
noun
- any distortion of space-time
- a hypothetical distortion of time in which people and events from one age can be imagined to exist in another age
- informal an illusion in which time appears to stand stillhe is living in a time warp
A stoppage in the passage of time; also, a distortion of time whereby an event or person could hypothetically move from one era to another. For example, Nothing in their lives has changed since the sixties; they’re in a time warp, or Having a seventy-year-old actress portray a teenager—that was some time warp! This term originated in science fiction, where it signifies “a supernatural movement from one era to another,” and came to be used more loosely. [c. 1950]