- Time immemorial
Time immemorial is a phrase meaning time extending beyond the reach of
memory , record, ortradition . The implication is that the subject referred to is, or can be regarded as, indefinitely ancient. The phrase is one of the few cases in the English Language where the postmodifier is anadjective . Modern historians, anthropologists, and others have often criticized the use of the term as a view of contemporary conditions as without history, i.e. as essential and unchanging in nature.The term has been formally defined for some purposes.
* In
English law , "time immemorial" means "a time before legal history, and beyond legal memory." In1276 , this time was fixed by statute as the 3rd September1189 , the date of the coronation of King Richard I (Richard the Lionheart). Proof of unbroken possession or use of any right since that date made it unnecessary to establish the original grant. In 1832, the plan of dating legal memory from a fixed time was abandoned; instead, it was held that rights which had been enjoyed for twenty years (or as againstthe Crown thirty years) should not be impeached merely by proving that they had not been enjoyed before. [Thepublic domain Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)]
* TheCourt of Chivalry is said to have defined the period before1066 as "time immemorial" for the purposes ofheraldry . [ [http://members.aol.com/tradbowmd/heraldry/history.htm#time History of Heraldry ] ] [http://www.infokey.com/hall/herald.htm]The concept of "time immemorial" may be communicated in various ways and lives on in such rhetorical commonplaces as "time out of mind" and "since the mind of man runneth not to the contrary."
This phrase was used in the world's oldest joke [Reuters [http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSKUA14785120080801?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=69 World's oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC] ] , dating back to 1900 BC by the
Sumerians who inhabited what is now southernIraq . It goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."References
ee also
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From Time Immemorial , a 1984 book about theArab-Israeli conflict byJoan Peters
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