Split Second

I think we’d all agree that the pace of modern life is generally fast. Our ancestors in previous centuries marked the passing of time in years, days, and hours. Today, particularly as the accuracy of timekeeping has improved, we’re down to minutes, seconds, and even nanoseconds. Our word today reflects that speeding up of time.

We use the term “split second” to refer to something instantaneous or that happens in the fraction of a second. But just how modern is this word? Well, maybe not quite as modern as we might imagine. The OED and other sources point to G. K. Chesterton’s book Manalive, published in 1912, as the first recorded instance of the term as a noun. As is customary, the adjective followed its noun relative some years later in 1946. So if a book is set in the 1920s, for example, characters could make a decision in a split second but not make a split-second decision. They’d have to hang around a couple more decades to do that, which would rather go against the spirit of the word, wouldn’t it?