Recent

See also: recent and récent

English

Etymology

As classifier for a geological epoch coinciding with human presence (“Recent era”) introduced by Charles Lyell in 1833.[1]

Proper noun

Recent

  1. (obsolete, geology) The Holocene.
    • 2012, Lydia Pyne, Stephen J. Pyne, The Last Lost World, Penguin, →ISBN:
      He [Charles Lyell] ignored Quaternary, a term he never accepted. The Recent addressed the age “tenanted by man,” which at the time barely extended beyond the chronicles of the Bible.

Adjective

Recent (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete, geology, astronomy) Of the Holocene, particularly pre-21st century.[2]

References
  1. Charles Lyell (1833) Principles of Geology, volume III, book IV, page 385: “All formations, whether igneous or aqueous, which can be shown by any such proofs to be of a date posterior to the introduction of man, will be called Recent.”
  2. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. quotes "P. Gibbard & T. van Kolfschoten in F. Gradstein et al. Geol. Time Scale 2004 xxii. 451/2 The term 'Recent' as an alternative to Holocene is invalid and should not be used."
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