Epic or epoch?
epic is a noun meaning “An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the…”; epoch is a noun meaning “A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) epic is about 14 times as common as epoch.
What is the difference between epic and epoch?
| epic | epoch | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, adjective | noun, verb |
| Meaning | An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a deity, demigod (heroic epic), other legend or traditional hero A series of events considered appropriate to an epic; any work of literature, film, etc. having heroic deeds and adventures as its subject matter Of or relating to an epic | A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable A notable event which marks the beginning of such a period To divide (data) into segments by time period |
| Example | The Icelandic epic took all night to recite | UNIX epoch; J2000 epoch |
| Forms | epics | epochs |
| Pronunciation | /ˈɛp.ɪk/ /ˈep.ɪk/ | /ˈiːpɒk/ /ˈɛpɒk/ /ˈɛpək/ |
| In writing | 22 times per million words | 1.5 times per million words |
Sources: epic and epoch in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of epic and epoch
epic
- 1
Acronym of explicitly parallel instruction computing
- 2
An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a deity, demigod (heroic epic), other legend or traditional hero
The Icelandic epic took all night to recite
- 3
Of or relating to an epic
Beowulf is an epic poem
- 4
That is an epimorphism
- 5
datedAlternative letter-case form of epic (“relating to epic poems”)
- 6
Alternative letter-case form of epic (“extended narrative poem”); especially a poem within a particular tradition of epics
- 7
Acronym of epitaxial integrated circuit
- 8
A series of events considered appropriate to an epic; any work of literature, film, etc. having heroic deeds and adventures as its subject matter
The book was an epic in four volumes
epoch
- 1
A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable
- 2
To divide (data) into segments by time period
- 3
An intensive chemotherapy regimen for treating aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, consisting of etoposide, prednisolone, Oncovin (vincristine), cyclophosphamide, and hydroxydaunorubicin
- 4
A notable event which marks the beginning of such a period
- 5
A specific instant in time, chosen as the point of reference or zero value of a system that involves identifying instants of time
UNIX epoch; J2000 epoch
- 6
A geochronologic unit of hundreds of thousands to millions of years; a subdivision of a period, and subdivided into ages (or sometimes subepochs)
- 7
One complete presentation of the training data set to an iterative machine learning algorithm
The neural network was trained over 500 epochs
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, epic or epoch?
epic appears 22 times per million words; epoch 1.5 times per million words.
epic 22 times per million wordsepoch 1.5 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search epic vs epoch?
“epic vs epoch” is searched about 260 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“epoch vs epic”, “epic or epoch”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.