about time


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(it's) about time

An expression used to emphasize that something should have occurred a long time ago. Well, it's about time you got here—I've been waiting for an hour! It's about time that high schools taught their students about basic banking and finance. A: "He finally moved out of his parents' house." B: "About time! He's 40 years old."
See also: time

about time

Long past the right time; also, approximately the right time. Thus, It's about time you went to bed can mean either that you should have gone to bed much earlier (often stated with emphasis on the word time), or that now is the appropriate time for you to retire. [Early 1900s] For a synonym, see high time.
See also: time

(and) about ˈtime (ˈtoo)

,

(and) not before ˈtime

(spoken) said when the speaker is pleased that something has happened but thinks that it should have happened sooner: Here comes the bus — and about time too. ♢ Julia’s been promoted, and not before time, considering the amount of work she does.
See also: time
References in periodicals archive ?
Having adopted both the patron's selfishness and the assumptions about time and sublimation that lie behind it, the narrator goes about gathering material for his symphony in a way that consistently strives to transform collective expression into individual expression.
Ragtime temporality is not reducible to African time, but the opposition between what Adorno describes and Mbiti's description of African time-conceptions is illustrative of the divergence between the impetus of the narrator's ragtime and the ideas about time that the narrator adopts from his patron.
Chronopolitics and race, rag-time and symphonic time in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
The real question about time travel may not be whether it's possible--but just why it's such a popular notion.
No time like the present
Rather, the concept of the decade represents thinking about time in a punctuated, discontinuous manner.
In his early work, Public Opinion, Lippmann demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of temporal nuances, observing that "A presumption about time enters widely into our opinions.
The strange history of the decade: modernity, nostalgia, and the perils of periodization
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