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What Is Another Way to Say “Time Travel”?

January 9, 2024

Linda Brown

Looking for synonyms for time travel ? We’ve got you covered!

Here’s a list of other ways to say time travel .

• Chrono-navigation
• Temporal displacement
• Time jumping
• Chrono-travel
• Temporal journeying
• Time voyaging
• Chronological expedition
• Temporal translocation
• Era hopping
• Time warp navigation

Want to learn how to say time travel professionally? Keep reading for examples and use cases.

1. Chrono-Navigation

Used in a scientific or speculative context, often relating to the theoretical concept of navigating through time.

Example:  The research paper explored the potential of chrono-navigation in quantum physics.

2. Temporal Displacement

Appropriate for describing the theoretical movement or shift in time, often used in science fiction.

Example:  The novel’s protagonist experienced temporal displacement, finding himself in a different century.

3. Time Jumping

Used in a more casual or informal context, often in storytelling or speculative discussions about moving through time.

Example:  The movie’s plot centered around a group of adventurers time jumping to various historical events.

4. Chrono-Travel

A term used in speculative fiction and theoretical discussions about traveling through time.

Example:  The seminar on theoretical physics discussed the possibilities and paradoxes of chrono-travel.

5. Temporal Journeying

Suitable for contexts where the focus is on the experience or adventure aspect of moving through time.

Example:  The documentary series depicted the concept of temporal journeying through dramatizations of historical events.

6. Time Voyaging

Often used in literary or entertainment contexts, implying an adventure or exploration aspect of traveling through time.

Example:  The author’s latest book is about a scientist’s time voyaging experiences.

7. Chronological Expedition

Appropriate for a more formal or elaborate expression of time travel, emphasizing exploration over time.

Example:  The theme of the science exhibition was ‘Chronological Expedition: A Journey Through History.’

8. Temporal Translocation

Used in scientific or technical discussions about the theoretical concept of moving from one time to another.

Example:  The lecture discussed the challenges associated with temporal translocation in theoretical physics.

9. Era Hopping

A casual term, often used in storytelling or discussions about moving between different historical periods.

Example:  The TV show’s main character is known for era hopping, experiencing different cultures and times.

10. Time Warp Navigation

Used in contexts that emphasize the science fiction or fantastical aspects of moving through time.

Example:  The game’s storyline involves time warp navigation to prevent a future catastrophe.

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Reverse Dictionary

This reverse dictionary allows you to search for words by their definition. Check out RelatedWords.org to get words related to a single word.

Click words for definitions

Finding words related to your query... Please be patient! :)

Popular Searches

Words for " time travel ".

As you've probably noticed, words for " time travel " are listed above. Hopefully the generated list of words for " time travel " above suit your needs. If not, you might want to check out Related Words - another project of mine which uses a different technique (not though that it works best with single words, not phrases).

About Reverse Dictionary

The way Reverse Dictionary works is pretty simple. It simply looks through tonnes of dictionary definitions and grabs the ones that most closely match your search query. For example, if you type something like "longing for a time in the past", then the engine will return "nostalgia". The engine has indexed several million definitions so far, and at this stage it's starting to give consistently good results (though it may return weird results sometimes). It acts a lot like a thesaurus except that it allows you to search with a definition, rather than a single word. So in a sense, this tool is a "search engine for words", or a sentence to word converter.

I made this tool after working on Related Words which is a very similar tool, except it uses a bunch of algorithms and multiple databases to find similar words to a search query. That project is closer to a thesaurus in the sense that it returns synonyms for a word (or short phrase) query, but it also returns many broadly related words that aren't included in thesauri. So this project, Reverse Dictionary, is meant to go hand-in-hand with Related Words to act as a word-finding and brainstorming toolset. For those interested, I also developed Describing Words which helps you find adjectives and interesting descriptors for things (e.g. waves, sunsets, trees, etc.).

In case you didn't notice, you can click on words in the search results and you'll be presented with the definition of that word (if available). The definitions are sourced from the famous and open-source WordNet database, so a huge thanks to the many contributors for creating such an awesome free resource.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: Elastic Search , @HubSpot , WordNet , and @mongodb .

Please note that Reverse Dictionary uses third party scripts (such as Google Analytics and advertisements) which use cookies. To learn more, see the privacy policy .

Recent Queries

Time Travel Words

Words related to time travel.

Below is a massive list of time travel words - that is, words related to time travel . The top 4 are: h. g. wells , causality , general relativity and many-worlds interpretation . You can get the definition(s) of a word in the list below by tapping the question-mark icon next to it. The words at the top of the list are the ones most associated with time travel , and as you go down the relatedness becomes more slight. By default, the words are sorted by relevance/relatedness, but you can also get the most common time travel terms by using the menu below, and there's also the option to sort the words alphabetically so you can get time travel words starting with a particular letter. You can also filter the word list so it only shows words that are also related to another word of your choosing. So for example, you could enter "h. g. wells" and click "filter", and it'd give you words that are related to time travel and h. g. wells.

You can highlight the terms by the frequency with which they occur in the written English language using the menu below. The frequency data is extracted from the English Wikipedia corpus, and updated regularly. If you just care about the words' direct semantic similarity to time travel , then there's probably no need for this.

There are already a bunch of websites on the net that help you find synonyms for various words, but only a handful that help you find related , or even loosely associated words. So although you might see some synonyms of time travel in the list below, many of the words below will have other relationships with time travel - you could see a word with the exact opposite meaning in the word list, for example. So it's the sort of list that would be useful for helping you build a time travel vocabulary list, or just a general time travel word list for whatever purpose, but it's not necessarily going to be useful if you're looking for words that mean the same thing as time travel (though it still might be handy for that).

If you're looking for names related to time travel (e.g. business names, or pet names), this page might help you come up with ideas. The results below obviously aren't all going to be applicable for the actual name of your pet/blog/startup/etc., but hopefully they get your mind working and help you see the links between various concepts. If your pet/blog/etc. has something to do with time travel , then it's obviously a good idea to use concepts or words to do with time travel .

If you don't find what you're looking for in the list below, or if there's some sort of bug and it's not displaying time travel related words, please send me feedback using this page. Thanks for using the site - I hope it is useful to you! 🐺

• h. g. wells
• general relativity
• many-worlds interpretation
• novikov self-consistency principle
• science fiction
• special relativity
• the time machine
• cosmic string
• christianity
• alcubierre drive
• quantum mechanics
• mahākāśyapa
• stephen hawking
• chronology protection conjecture
• einstein field equations
• time travel in fiction
• exact solutions in general relativity
• time perception
• theoretical physics
• quantum mechanics of time travel
• vishnu purana
• plesiosauria
• urashima tarō
• gautama buddha
• united states
• exotic matter
• seven sleepers
• honi ha-m'agel
• persecution of christians in the roman empire
• back to the future
• siege of jerusalem
• louis-sébastien mercier
• the year 2440
• washington irving
• rip van winkle
• faster-than-light
• synchronization
• looking backward
• the sleeper awakes
• edward bellamy
• a supplement to the journey to the west
• song dynasty
• qin dynasty
• memoirs of the twentieth century
• samuel madden
• august derleth
• guardian angel
• alexander veltman
• newcastle upon tyne
• a christmas carol
• charles dickens
• edward everett hale
• pierre boitard
• the clock that went backward
• alternate history
• relativity of simultaneity
• edward page mitchell
• andrew sawyer
• enrique gaspar y rimbau
• closed timelike curve
• quantum entanglement
• interference
• grandfather paradox
• temporal paradox
• semiclassical gravity
• quantum gravity
• closed time-like curve
• mach's principle
• gödel metric
• hubble expansion
• vehicle propulsion
• extraterrestrial life
• negative energy
• time dilation
• casimir effect
• energy condition
• matt visser
• willem jacob van stockum
• tipler cylinder
• frank tipler
• kornel lanczos
• ronald mallett
• television series
• cauchy horizon
• weak energy condition
• tachyonic antitelephone
• compossibility
• epr paradox
• quantum teleportation
• quantum field theory
• bohm interpretation
• no-communication theorem
• superluminal communication
• speed of light
• hugh everett
• delayed-choice quantum eraser
• david deutsch
• double-slit experiment
• marlan scully
• günter nimtz
• fourier analysis
• quantum tunneling
• university of koblenz
• aephraim m. steinberg
• new scientist
• shengwang du
• university of toronto
• assassin's creed
• fermi paradox
• time traveler convention
• massachusetts institute of technology
• frame of reference
• experimental testing of time dilation
• relativistic speed
• proper time
• equivalence principle
• twin paradox
• global positioning system
• gravity well
• philosophy of space and time
• jupiter mass
• isaac newton
• ancient greece
• gottfried wilhelm leibniz
• absolute time and space
• dean rickles
• theory of relativity
• general covariance
• preferred frame
• causal loop
• igor dmitrievich novikov
• by his bootstraps
• robert a. heinlein
• somewhere in time
• second law of thermodynamics
• fluctuation theorem
• statistical mechanics
• karl svozil

That's about all the time travel related words we've got! I hope this list of time travel terms was useful to you in some way or another. The words down here at the bottom of the list will be in some way associated with time travel , but perhaps tenuously (if you've currenly got it sorted by relevance, that is). If you have any feedback for the site, please share it here , but please note this is only a hobby project, so I may not be able to make regular updates to the site. Have a nice day! 👽

Related Words

This tool helps you find words that are related to a specific word or phrase. Also check out ReverseDictionary.org and DescribingWords.io . Here are some words that are associated with time travel : . You can get the definitions of these time travel related words by clicking on them. Also check out describing words for time travel and find more words related to time travel using ReverseDictionary.org

Click words for definitions

Our algorithm is scanning multiple databases for related words. Please be patient! :)

Words Related to time travel

Below is a list of words related to time travel . You can click words for definitions. Sorry if there's a few unusual suggestions! The algorithm isn't perfect, but it does a pretty good job for common-ish words. Here's the list of words that are related to time travel :

• science fiction
• h. g. wells
• special relativity
• general relativity
• novikov self-consistency principle
• theory of relativity
• inertial frame of reference
• time machine
• synchronous
• seasonableness
• simultaneity
• chronological
• timekeeping
• time of arrival
• arrow of time
• amsterdam time
• time of departure
• morningtide
• crunch time
• between time
• greenwich mean time
• daylight save time
• time dilation
• time horizon
• fourth dimension
• compile time
• the time machine

Popular Searches

As you've probably noticed, words related to " time travel " are listed above. Hopefully the generated list of term related words above suit your needs.

P.S. There are some problems that I'm aware of, but can't currently fix (because they are out of the scope of this project). The main one is that individual words can have many different senses (meanings), so when you search for a word like mean , the engine doesn't know which definition you're referring to ("bullies are mean " vs. "what do you mean ?", etc.), so consider that your search query for words like term may be a bit ambiguous to the engine in that sense, and the related terms that are returned may reflect this. You might also be wondering: What type of word is ~term~ ?

Also check out time travel words on relatedwords.io for another source of associations.

Related Words runs on several different algorithms which compete to get their results higher in the list. One such algorithm uses word embedding to convert words into many dimensional vectors which represent their meanings. The vectors of the words in your query are compared to a huge database of of pre-computed vectors to find similar words. Another algorithm crawls through Concept Net to find words which have some meaningful relationship with your query. These algorithms, and several more, are what allows Related Words to give you... related words - rather than just direct synonyms.

As well as finding words related to other words, you can enter phrases and it should give you related words and phrases, so long as the phrase/sentence you entered isn't too long. You will probably get some weird results every now and then - that's just the nature of the engine in its current state.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used to bring you this list of time travel themed words: @Planeshifter , @HubSpot , Concept Net , WordNet , and @mongodb .

There is still lots of work to be done to get this to give consistently good results, but I think it's at the stage where it could be useful to people, which is why I released it.

Please note that Related Words uses third party scripts (such as Google Analytics and advertisements) which use cookies. To learn more, see the privacy policy .

Recent Queries

Synonyms of travel

• as in to trek
• as in to traverse
• as in to fly
• as in to associate
• More from M-W
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Thesaurus Definition of travel

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Synonyms & Similar Words

• peregrinate
• road - trip
• knock (about)
• perambulate
• pass (over)
• cut (across)
• proceed (along)
• get a move on
• make tracks
• shake a leg
• hotfoot (it)
• fast - forward

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• hang (around or out)
• slow (down or up)
• collaborate
• take up with
• keep company (with)
• rub shoulders (with)
• fall in with
• pal (around)
• rub elbows (with)
• mess around
• be friends with
• interrelate
• confederate
• cold - shoulder

Thesaurus Definition of travel  (Entry 2 of 2)

• peregrination
• commutation

Examples of travel in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'travel.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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Thesaurus Entries Near travel

Cite this entry.

“Travel.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/travel. Accessed 7 Sep. 2024.

More from Merriam-Webster on travel

Nglish: Translation of travel for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of travel for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about travel

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80 Time Travel Quotes That Will Take You To Another Dimension

Going Back In Time Quotes

Famous time travel quotes, time travel quotes by scientists, time machine quotes, pop culture time travel quotes.

The concept of time travel makes things interesting.

Even the greatest mind in history gets lost when it comes to time travel. The absolute truth is still to be found by human beings.

The world is extremely curious to see what is the end result of years of research. Check out this list of inspirational time travel quotes.

You may like these time travel quotes and wonder how today would be different if time traveling existed. These time travel quotes give a subtle insight into a hidden life which many of us would like to see.

Check out 10th Doctor quotes and 11th Doctor quotes as well!

Traveling through time is something everybody would want to do. Here are the best traveling back to the past quotes and time travel quotes you may like.

1. "You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again."

- Bonnie Prudden.

2. "You've got to always go back in time if you want to move forward."

-Snoop Dogg.

3. "I want to go back in time. Not to change anything, but to feel something again."

4. "Do not look back with regret. Past will never come back again."

– Henry Longfellow.

5. "There's going to be moments in life where you are going to want to turn back — that's when you have to go on."

— Ritu Ghatourey.

6. "We cannot go back in time and change the past but we can repent."

– Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

7. "I love going back in time, and the only time you can really do that is on a movie set."

– Tate Taylor.

8. "Life is a learning experience. All you can do is learn from your mistakes, but you can't go back in time."

– Amy Dumas.

9. "You're trying to figure out a way to go back in time and spend more time with your father. Who wouldn't want to do that?"

-Jeremy Piven.

10. "I wish I could freeze time or go back in time and watch my kids grow up all over again because it is just going by too fast."

– Robert Rodriguez.

11. "What happens is, when I perform, I'm somewhere else. I go back in time and get in touch with who I really am."

-Etta James.

12. "But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?"

— Cheryl Strayed.

13. "Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make."

– Douglas Adams.

14. "If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day."

-Alexander Payne.

15. "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

Time travel is such a wide topic of discussion. Check out these inspirational time travel quotes and some much-loved inspirational travel quotes which you may need!

16. "In a sense, we all are Time Travelers! We are surviving each and every Active Time-Point in this timeline..."

― Aldrin Mathew, 'Time Travel Experiences,' 2017.

17. "Time travel is a philosophical concept, not a scientific one. It is, in fact, as has been pointed out, scientific nonsense."

-Alexie Panshin, 'The Mirror of Infinity,’ 1970.

18. "The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics."

-Brian Greene.

19. "Jade blinked. It was only for a fraction of a second but she could have sworn the house had changed shape."

― Richard J. Ward, 'The Hermit and the Time Machine,' 2014.

20. "There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it."

-H. G. Wells, 'The Time Machine,' 1895.

21. "Antigravity, teleportation, time travel, energetic DNA evolution, and consciousness transformation could create a world few of us ever even dreamed of."

-David Wilcock, 'The Synchronicity Key' 2013.

22. "I am charging you with the protection of my mother and friends, not to mention keeping my younger self off the Internet. He is as dangerous as Opal."

― Eoin Colfer, 'Artemis Fowl,’2008.

23. "I have a secret project which adds four hours every day to the 24 hours we have. There's a bit of time travel involved."

-Sundar Pichai

24. "One may never get to know how fast the time travels till the one gets in that position to race against the time."

 -Neel Preet, 'Voice from the East,' 2016.

25. "It's this simple: Spacetime implies the possibility of time travel."

-Dilip D'Souza, '"How Realistic Is The Idea Of Time Travel?", Live Mint'

26. "When you ghost hunt, you kind of time travel: you get that residue of the past."

- Zak Bagans.

27. "The causality violation device may be doing something else. May have already done it. Something wonderful and terrible."

― Dexter Palmer, 'Version Control,' 2016.

28. "Come here, cat. You wouldn't want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow."

-Connie Willis, 'To Say Nothing of the Dog,' 1997.

29. "The truth is, time travel is hard, and people are lazy."

- Margaret Peterson Haddix , 'Redeemed,'2015.

30. "Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible."

-Stephen Hawking.

31. "The best evidence that time travel is impossible is the fact that we haven't been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future."  

  -Guillaume Musso.

32. "Don't time travel into the past, roaming through the nuances as if they can change. Don't bookmark pages you've already read."

-James Altucher.

33. "Our memory is and always will be as good as time travel gets, and in the meantime time will do the travelling for us."

- Maria Konnikova.

34. "Forward time travel is no big deal, being in reality nothing but slow aging."

-Katinka Ridderbos, 'Time,' 2002.

35. "Time travel offends our sense of cause and effect - but maybe the universe doesn't insist on cause and effect."

-Edward M. Lerner.

36. "I like science fiction, I like fantasy, I like time travel, so I had this idea: What if you had a phone that could call into the past?"

-Rainbow Rowell.

Here are quotes about time travel to have a better understanding, including Stephen Hawking time travel quotes. These time travel quotes are inspirational.

37. "If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?"

-Stephen Hawking, 'A Brief History of Time,’ 1988.

38. "I myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn't forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it."

-David Deutsch.

39. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

― Albert Einstein.

40. "What's important about the model is the idea that the past, present and future are all equally real."

-Dr. Kristie Miller.

41. "Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a 'crank.'"

42. "The basic idea if you're very, very optimistic is that if you fiddle with the wormhole openings, you can make it not only a shortcut from a point in space to another point in space, but a shortcut from one moment in time to another moment in time."

43. "Time travel may be possible, but it is not practical."

44. "Around and around they'd go, experiencing just half the time of everyone far away from the black hole. The ship and its crew would be traveling through time,"

-Stephen Hawking, 'The Daily Mail,'.

45. "People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

-Albert Einstein.

46. "If you can bend space, there is a possibility of you twisting space."

-Ron Mallet.

Let's look into some of these inspirational time machine quotes and time travel quotes.

47. "Cameras are the world's first time machines."

― Rebecca McNutt, 'Smog City,'.

48. "We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

-H.G Wells.

49. "If you ever find yourself coming out of a time machine, run. Run away as fast you can."

― Charles Yu, 'How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe ,'.

50. "Sometimes I wish that I could go into a time machine right now and just look at myself and say, 'Calm down. Things are gonna be fine. Things are gonna be all great. Just relax."

-Tristan Wilds.

51. "Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition."

-Arthur Koestler, 'The Trail of the Dinosaur,'.

52. "To take the time machine, one had to simply lift its case"

― M. Mehwar Anjum, 'The Heist'.

53. "When I finally invent a time machine you will already know about it because I'll have told you a long time ago."

-Dana Gould.

54. "My mind has a time machine; it can travel back to the past when I close my eyes and in my dreams it travels to the future."

― Munia Khan.

55. "You don't need a time machine if you know how to remember."

-Rodman Philbrick, 'Freak the Mighty,'.

56. "I go to the movies whenever I get the chance, because the movie theater is like the woods. It's another place that's like a time machine."

-Carol Rifka Brunt, 'Tell the Wolves I'm Home,'.

57. "Smell is the closest thing human beings have to a time machine"

-Caryl Rivers, 'More Joy Than Rage,'.

58. "Never bring a gun to a fight where the other guy has a time-machine and tomorrow's newspapers."

-James Nicoll.

59. "Live & do everything in such a way so that if you look back in time, you shouldn't say that if had a time machine I would've done it better."

― Immanuel Mohan.

60. I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.

-Samantha Hunt, 'The Invention of Everything Else,'.

61. "The Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons."

-H.G Wells, 'The time machine: Chapter 5,'.

62. "If you have a wormhole, then you can turn them into time machines for going backward in time."

-Kip Thorne.

63. "I write about times and places I would visit in a time machine, like ancient Rome or the Wild West."

-Caroline Lawrence.

64. "At my house I have a full-size time machine that I've built over a couple of years... I love looking at people's faces when they walk into my office. They're literally astounded."

-Gregory Nicotero.

65. "When I was in high school, girls made fun of me for liking vampire movies. Now, I'd be their king. Time machine, where are you?"

66. "Just throw me in a time machine, hit random, and wherever I land would be great... Just being thrown into a different time really fascinates me."

-Beau Mirchoff.

Our favorite movies and shows are full of inspirational time travel quotes. Here are some from science fiction you might still love, including Doctor Who time travel quotes.

67. "If either of us ever invent time travel, we agree our first stop will be this meeting today in precisely five seconds."

-Sheldon Cooper, ' The Big Bang Theory ,'.

68. "If you travel back into your own past, that destination becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future."

-Professor Hulk, 'The Avengers: Endgame'.

69. "I got two charges. One to get me here. One to get me home."

-Cable, ' Deadpool 2.'

70. "Wish we could turn back time

To the good old days"

- Twenty one pilots .

71. "Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine...Out of a DeLorean?"

-Marty McFly, ' Back to the Future ,'.

72. "The question is not where but when."

-Mikkel Neilson, 'Dark'.

73. "Dormammu, I've come to bargain."

-Doctor Strange, 'Doctor Strange'.

74. "It must be some kind of hot tub time machine"

-Nick, 'Hot Tub Time Machine'.

75. "Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space."

-Brand, ' Interstellar ' 2014.

76. "The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make."

-Kyle Reese, 'The Terminator'.

77. "Miss Granger, three turns should do it. Good luck."

- Albus Dumbledore, 'Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Azkaban,' 2004.

78. "You just have to come home!"

-Professor X, 'X-Men: Days of future past'.

79. "Shh! Listen! Someone's coming! I think -- I think it might be us!"

- J. K. Rowling, 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban'.

80. "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff."

-The Doctor, 'Doctor Who' 2007.

Here at Kidadl , we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Time Travel Quotes then why not take a look at Perfect Timing quotes and Time Flies quotes ?

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Bachelor of Arts specializing in Journalism and Mass Communication, Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Management

Moumita Dutta Bachelor of Arts specializing in Journalism and Mass Communication, Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Management

A content writer and editor with a passion for sports, Moumita has honed her skills in producing compelling match reports and stories about sporting heroes. She holds a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Calcutta University, alongside a postgraduate diploma in Sports Management.

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Where Does the Concept of Time Travel Come From?

Time; he's waiting in the wings.

The dream of traveling through time is both ancient and universal. But where did humanity's fascination with time travel begin, and why is the idea so appealing?

The concept of time travel — moving through time the way we move through three-dimensional space — may in fact be hardwired into our perception of time . Linguists have recognized that we are essentially incapable of talking about temporal matters without referencing spatial ones. "In language — any language — no two domains are more intimately linked than space and time," wrote Israeli linguist Guy Deutscher in his 2005 book "The Unfolding of Language." "Even if we are not always aware of it, we invariably speak of time in terms of space, and this reflects the fact that we think of time in terms of space."

Deutscher reminds us that when we plan to meet a friend "around" lunchtime, we are using a metaphor, since lunchtime doesn't have any physical sides. He similarly points out that time can not literally be "long" or "short" like a stick, nor "pass" like a train, or even go "forward" or "backward" any more than it goes sideways, diagonal or down.

Related: Why Does Time Fly When You're Having Fun?

Perhaps because of this connection between space and time, the possibility that time can be experienced in different ways and traveled through has surprisingly early roots. One of the first known examples of time travel appears in the Mahabharata, an ancient Sanskrit epic poem compiled around 400 B.C., Lisa Yaszek, a professor of science fiction studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told Live Science 

In the Mahabharata is a story about King Kakudmi, who lived millions of years ago and sought a suitable husband for his beautiful and accomplished daughter, Revati. The two travel to the home of the creator god Brahma to ask for advice. But while in Brahma's plane of existence, they must wait as the god listens to a 20-minute song, after which Brahma explains that time moves differently in the heavens than on Earth. It turned out that "27 chatur-yugas" had passed, or more than 116 million years, according to an online summary , and so everyone Kakudmi and Revati had ever known, including family members and potential suitors, was dead. After this shock, the story closes on a somewhat happy ending in that Revati is betrothed to Balarama, twin brother of the deity Krishna. 

Time is fleeting

To Yaszek, the tale provides an example of what we now call time dilation , in which different observers measure different lengths of time based on their relative frames of reference, a part of Einstein's theory of relativity.

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Such time-slip stories are widespread throughout the world, Yaszek said, citing a Middle Eastern tale from the first century BCE about a Jewish miracle worker who sleeps beneath a newly-planted carob tree and wakes up 70 years later to find it has now matured and borne fruit (carob trees are notorious for how long they take to produce their first harvest). Another instance can be found in an eighth-century Japanese fable about a fisherman named Urashima Tarō who travels to an undersea palace and falls in love with a princess. Tarō finds that, when he returns home, 100 years have passed, according to a translation of the tale published online by the University of South Florida . 

In the early-modern era of the 1700 and 1800s, the sleep-story version of time travel grew more popular, Yaszek said. Examples include the classic tale of Rip Van Winkle, as well as books like Edward Belamy's utopian 1888 novel "Looking Backwards," in which a man wakes up in the year 2000, and the H.G. Wells 1899 novel "The Sleeper Awakes," about a man who slumbers for centuries and wakes to a completely transformed London. 

Related: Science Fiction or Fact: Is Time Travel Possible ?

In other stories from this period, people also start to be able to move backward in time. In Mark Twain’s 1889 satire "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," a blow to the head propels an engineer back to the reign of the legendary British monarch. Objects that can send someone through time begin to appear as well, mainly clocks, such as in Edward Page Mitchell's 1881 story "The Clock that Went Backwards" or Lewis Carrol's 1889 children's fantasy "Sylvie and Bruno," where the characters possess a watch that is a type of time machine . 

The explosion of such stories during this era might come from the fact that people were "beginning to standardize time, and orient themselves to clocks more frequently," Yaszek said. 

Time after time

Wells provided one of the most enduring time-travel plots in his 1895 novella "The Time Machine," which included the innovation of a craft that can move forward and backward through long spans of time. "This is when we’re getting steam engines and trains and the first automobiles," Yaszek said. "I think it’s no surprise that Wells suddenly thinks: 'Hey, maybe we can use a vehicle to travel through time.'"

Because it is such a rich visual icon, many beloved time-travel stories written after this have included a striking time machine, Yaszek said, referencing The Doctor's blue police box — the TARDIS — in the long-running BBC series "Doctor Who," and "Back to the Future"'s silver luxury speedster, the DeLorean . 

More recently, time travel has been used to examine our relationship with the past, Yaszek said, in particular in pieces written by women and people of color. Octavia Butler's 1979 novel "Kindred" about a modern woman who visits her pre-Civil-War ancestors is "a marvelous story that really asks us to rethink black and white relations through history," she said. And a contemporary web series called " Send Me " involves an African-American psychic who can guide people back to antebellum times and witness slavery. 

"I'm really excited about stories like that," Yaszek said. "They help us re-see history from new perspectives."

Time travel has found a home in a wide variety of genres and media, including comedies such as "Groundhog Day" and "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" as well as video games like Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" and the indie game "Braid." 

Yaszek suggested that this malleability and ubiquity speaks to time travel tales' ability to offer an escape from our normal reality. "They let us imagine that we can break free from the grip of linear time," she said. "And somehow get a new perspective on the human experience, either our own or humanity as a whole, and I think that feels so exciting to us." 

That modern people are often drawn to time-machine stories in particular might reflect the fact that we live in a technological world, she added. Yet time travel's appeal certainly has deeper roots, interwoven into the very fabric of our language and appearing in some of our earliest imaginings. 

"I think it's a way to make sense of the otherwise intangible and inexplicable, because it's hard to grasp time," Yaszek said. "But this is one of the final frontiers, the frontier of time, of life and death. And we're all moving forward, we're all traveling through time."

• If There Were a Time Warp, How Would Physicists Find It?
• Can Animals Tell Time?
• Why Does Time Sometimes Fly When You're NOT Having Fun?

Originally published on Live Science .

Adam Mann is a freelance journalist with over a decade of experience, specializing in astronomy and physics stories. He has a bachelor's degree in astrophysics from UC Berkeley. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, National Geographic, Wall Street Journal, Wired, Nature, Science, and many other places. He lives in Oakland, California, where he enjoys riding his bike. 

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kick something into the long grass

to delay dealing with something, especially because you want people to forget about it

Like a bull in a china shop: talking about people who are clumsy

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