The ancient Greeks had two different words for the concept of time — “chronos” and “kairos”. The word “chronos” (as the root for the English words “chronological” and “chronicle”) refers to measured, ticking, quantitative time; and the forward propelling time that we measure with clocks, on watches, and by the evolutionary phases of the moon.

The Greeks’ second word for time is “kairos” — lesser known but no less important. “Kairos” is what many philosophers and mystics would refer to as “deep time”. Kairos is a qualitative notion of time, which may be subjective or unmeasurable . Kairos also implies time has its own “weight”, as one may be more significant from the others .

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kairos 是古希腊人的对于时机或天时的一种概念化 近现代无法直接具体化引用

Definitions of kairos using modern English are inherently vague: There is no one word in today''s English language that succinctly encompasses the meaning of kairos (similar to ethos, logos, and pathos).

比较有意思的 是被称为the father of medicine 的古希腊学者 Hippocrates 这么说 "every kairos is a chronos but not every chronos is a kairos"