What is "moment"

Moment \Mo"ment\, n. [F. moment, L. momentum, for movimentum movement, motion, moment, fr. movere to move. See Move, and cf. Momentum, Movement.]

1. A minute portion of time; a point of time; an instant; as, at that very moment.

   In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
   --1 Cor. xv. 5

2. 2. Impulsive power; force; momentum.

   The moments or quantities of motion in bodies.
   --Berkley.

   Touch, with lightest moment of impulse, His free will.
   --Milton.

3. Importance, as in influence or effect; consequence; weight or value; consideration.

   Matters of great moment.
   --Shak.

   It is an abstruse speculation, but also of far less moment and consequence of us than the others.
   --Bentley.

4. An essential element; a deciding point, fact, or consideration; an essential or influential circumstance.

5. (Math.) An infinitesimal change in a varying quantity; an increment or decrement. [Obs.]

6. (Mech.) Tendency, or measure of tendency, to produce motion, esp. motion about a fixed point or axis. Moment of a couple (Mech.), the product of either of its forces into the perpendicular distance between them. Moment of a force. (Mech.)

   1. With respect to a point, the product of the intensity of the force into the perpendicular distance from the point to the line of direction of the force.

   2. With respect to a line, the product of that component of the force which is perpendicular to the plane passing through the line and the point of application of the force, into the shortest distance between the line and this point.

   3. With respect to a plane that is parallel to the force, the product of the force into the perpendicular distance of its point of application from the plane.

      Moment of inertia, of a rotating body, the sum of the mass of each particle of matter of the body into the square of its distance from the axis of rotation; -- called also moment of rotation and moment of the mass.

      Statical moment, the product of a force into its leverage; the same as moment of a force with respect to a point, line, etc.

      Virtual moment. See under Virtual.

      Syn: Instant; twinkling; consequence; weight; force; value; consideration; signification; avail.

mid-14c., "very brief portion of time, instant," in moment of time, from Old French moment (12c.) "moment, minute; importance, weight, value" or directly from Latin momentum "movement, motion; moving power; alteration, change;" also "short time, instant" (also source of Spanish, Italian momento), contraction of *movimentum, from movere "to move" (see move (v.)). Some (but not OED) explain the sense evolution of the Latin word by notion of a particle so small it would just "move" the pointer of a scale, which led to the transferred sense of "minute time division." Sense of "importance, 'weight' " is attested in English from 1520s.\n

\nPhrase never a dull moment first recorded 1889 in Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat." Phrase moment of truth first recorded 1932 in Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon," from Spanish el momento de la verdad, the final sword-thrust in a bull-fight.

n. A brief, unspecified amount of time.

1. n. a particular point in time; "the moment he arrived the party began" [syn: minute, second, instant]

2. an indefinitely short time; "wait just a moment"; "it only takes a minute"; "in just a bit" [syn: minute, second, bit]

3. at this time; "the disappointments of the here and now"; "she is studying at the moment" [syn: here and now, present moment]

4. having important effects or influence; "decisions of great consequence are made by the president himself"; "virtue is of more moment that security" [syn: consequence, import] [ant: inconsequence]

5. the moment of a couple is the product of its force and the distance between its opposing forces

6. the n-th moment of a distribution is the expected value of the n-th power of the deviations from a fixed value

In physics, a moment is an expression involving the product of a distance and a physical quantity, and in this way it accounts for how the physical quantity is located or arranged. Moments are usually defined with respect to a fixed reference point; they deal with physical quantities as measured at some distance from that reference point. For example, the moment of force acting on an object, often called torque, is the product of the force and the distance from a reference point. In principle, any physical quantity can be multiplied by distance to produce a moment; commonly used quantities include forces, masses, and electric charge distributions.

Moment or Moments may refer to:

Moment is an American independent, non-profit magazine. While the publication is a secular journal, material is targeted toward readership with interests related to Jewish culture. The magazine is a publishing project of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Creative Change.

Moment is Japanese J-pop band Speed's greatest hits album following their first album, Starting Over and second album, Rise. Moment was released on December 16, 1998 and contains all the commercially released singles from their first and second albums along with additional tracks. Debuting at number 1 on the Oricon charts and eventually selling 2.32 million copies, Moment is the best-selling album by a female group in Japanese music history.

Moment (, translit. Tren) is a 1978 Yugoslav war film directed by Stole Janković. It was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival where Bata Živojinović won the award for Best Actor.

In mathematics, a moment is a specific quantitative measure, used in both mechanics and statistics, of the shape of a set of points. If the points represent mass, then the zeroth moment is the total mass, the first moment divided by the total mass is the center of mass, and the second moment is the rotational inertia. If the points represent probability density, then the zeroth moment is the total probability (i.e. one), the first moment is the mean, the second central moment is the variance, the third moment is the skewness, and the fourth moment (with normalization and shift) is the kurtosis. The mathematical concept is closely related to the concept of moment in physics.

For a bounded distribution of mass or probability, the collection of all the moments (of all orders, from to ) uniquely determines the distribution.

A moment (momentum) was a medieval unit of time. The movement of a shadow on a sundial covered 40 moments in a solar hour. An hour in this case means one twelfth of the period between sunrise and sunset. The length of a solar hour depended on the length of the day, which in turn varied with the season, so the length of a moment in modern seconds was not fixed, but on average, a moment corresponds to 90 seconds: A day was divided into 24 hours (of unequal lengths, twelve hours of the day and the night each), and an hour was divided into four puncta (quarter-hours), ten minuta and 40 momenta.

The unit was used by medieval computists before the introduction of the mechanical clock and the base 60 system in the late 13th century. The unit would not have been used in everyday life. For our medieval counterparts the main marker of the passage of time was the call to prayer at intervals throughout the day.

The earliest reference we have to the moment is from the 8th century writings of the Venerable Bede. Bede describes the system as 1 hour = 4 points = 10 minutes = 15 parts = 40 moments. Bede was referenced four centuries later by Bartholomeus Anglicus in his early encyclopedia De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Properties of Things). Centuries after Bede's description, the moment was further divided into 60 ostents, although no such divisions could ever have been used in observation with equipment in use at the time.

"Moment" is a song by Japanese band SMAP. Released as a single on August 1, 2012, the song was used as the theme song for the TBS Television broadcast of the 2012 Summer Olympics, for which SMAP member Masahiro Nakai was the main sportscaster. It was written by the band Sakanaction's vocalist and songwriter Ichiro Yamaguchi, while the single's B-side "Te o Tsunagō" was written by producer Kenichi Maeyamada. The single was commercially successful, reaching number one on Oricon's singles chart, and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan.