jiffy

noun
/ˈd͡ʒɪ.fi/US

Etymology

Origin unknown; said to have been thieves’ cant for “lightning”. Also formerly written "giffy", to which a connection with gliff has been proposed. As a kind of envelope, a genericization of Jiffy bag.

Definitions

  1. A very short, unspecified length of time.

    • I’ll be back in a jiffy.
    • Most of the limbs of the law do every thing in a jiffy; but ask what they mean, and they would be as much puzzled, as if you required of them the explanantion of a common act of parliament.
  2. A unit of time defined by the frequency of its basic timer – historically, and by…

    A unit of time defined by the frequency of its basic timer – historically, and by convention, 0.01 of a second, but some computer operating systems use other values.

    • The number of processed packets per round is limited in dependence of the page size. The processed packets are forwarded to a single queue and are processed for the time of two jiffies.
  3. The length of an alternating current power cycle (1/60 or 1/50 of a second).

  4. + 3 more definitions
    1. The time taken for light to travel a specified distance in a vacuum, usually one…

      The time taken for light to travel a specified distance in a vacuum, usually one centimetre (approximately 33.3564 picoseconds), but sometimes one foot or the width of a nucleon.

    2. Ellipsis of jiffy bag, a padded envelope.

    3. Alternative form of Jiffy bag.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for jiffy. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA