Thyme or time?
thyme is a noun meaning “Any plant of the labiate genus Thymus, such as garden thyme (Thymus vulgaris)…”; time is a noun meaning “The inevitable progression into the future with the passing of present and past…”. They sound the same (/taɪm/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) time is about 1,660 times as common as thyme.
What is the difference between thyme and time?
| thyme | time | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun, verb, interjection, suffix |
| Meaning | Any plant of the labiate genus Thymus, such as garden thyme (Thymus vulgaris), a warm, pungent aromatic, that is much used to give a relish to seasoning and… | The inevitable progression into the future with the passing of present and past events The feeling of the passage of events and their relative duration, as experienced by an individual To measure or record the time, duration, or rate of something |
| Example | none recorded | Time stops for nobody. the ebb and flow of time |
| Forms | thymes | times |
| Pronunciation | /taɪm/ /tɑem/ [tɑe̯m] | /taɪm/ [tʰaɪ̯m] /təɪm/ |
| In writing | 1.2 times per million words | 1,950 times per million words |
Sources: thyme and time 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 thyme and time
thyme
- 1
Any plant of the labiate genus Thymus, such as garden thyme (Thymus vulgaris), a warm, pungent aromatic, that is much used to give a relish to seasoning and soups
time
- 1
The inevitable progression into the future with the passing of present and past events
Time stops for nobody. the ebb and flow of time
- 2
To measure or record the time, duration, or rate of something
I used a stopwatch to time myself running around the block
- 3
Reminder by the umpire for the players to continue playing after their pause
- 4
Suffix used to indicate how many times something has occurred
She is a four-time world champion
- 5
The feeling of the passage of events and their relative duration, as experienced by an individual
Time flies when you're having fun
- 6
To choose when something commences or its duration
The President timed his speech badly, coinciding with the Super Bowl
- 7
The umpire's call in prizefights, etc
- 8
A dimension of spacetime with the opposite metric signature to space dimensions; the fourth dimension
Both science-fiction writers and physicists have written about travel through time
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, thyme or time?
thyme appears 1.2 times per million words; time 1,950 times per million words.
thyme 1.2 times per million wordstime 1,950 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).