# tempus fugit

idiom · CEFR C1 · Literary

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/tempus-fugit
Updated: 2026-08-03

## Meaning

Time flies — said when far more of it has gone than you expected.

## Examples

- Is it really five o'clock already? Tempus fugit.
- The photograph was taken ten years ago, which seemed impossible until she did the arithmetic — tempus fugit.
- He had been meaning to write the book since his thirties, and the motto carved into the clock in his father's hallway — tempus fugit — had watched him not write it for the better part of three decades.

## Origin

Virgil wrote the line in the Georgics, a poem about farming: sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus — but meanwhile it flees, irretrievable time flees. He is talking about the breeding of horses, and the point is agricultural before it is philosophical. The animal's best years pass while you are deciding what to do with them. The two-word tag tempus fugit is a later compression, and it found its natural home on clocks. Sundials, church towers and longcase clocks across Europe carry it, often alongside a scythe or an hourglass, as a piece of furniture that comments on itself. English keeps it for the small shock of noticing elapsed time — a school reunion, a child's height, an anniversary that cannot possibly be the twentieth.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.