time belt

time belt (plural time belts)

1. (broadcasting) A range of timeslots when scheduled programs can expect a certain type of audience, and for which advertisements pay a certain rate.
   • 1973, Otto Kleppner, Advertising Procedure, page 147:

     The package rate is generally a total price for a schedule of spots at different time belts that costs less than the total of the rates for the individual spots making up the package.

   • 1985, Paolo Mefalopoulos, Why Diversification of Programs?:

     Both devote a large amount of time, in the fifth time belt, to news.

   • 2016, Linus Nnabuike Malu, Media Law and Policy in Nigeria, page 121:

     7. A sponsored programmed shall only be broadcast during the time belt in which it is legal for the sponsor to advertise its products.

   • 2011, Lai Oso, Umaru Pate, Mass Media and Society in Nigeria, page 247:

     Prices for each of these vary based on length of time (duration) and the time belt (am, pm, fringe time, primetime) required.

2. (science fiction) A belt that is worn to enable the wearer to travel through time.
   • 1997, Robert Rankin, Nostradamus Ate My Hamster, page 309:

     I've set it for the year dot, as it were. I wonder how long ago that is? A million years? A billion? They will put the time belt on the creature and press the little button.

   • 1999, J. Neil Schulman, Profile in Silver: And Other Screenwritings:

     Lancaster explains to Kensington that Kensington must put on the Time Belt—it's set to take him back to the moment of the assassination and will automatically merge him back into the proper time stream.

   • 2013, Jack L. Chalker, Downtiming the Night Side:

     The time belt was pretty much the same as all the others he'd worn, but it had no settings.

3. Synonym of time period.
   • 2018, Ferdinand Mount, Prime Movers:

     One of the most striking things about them is what a narrow time-belt so many of them were born into. Half of my chosen Movers were born within fifty years of each other, between 1710 and 1760.

4. Synonym of time zone.
   • 1913, Ralph Stockman Tarr, Frank Morton McMurry, World Geographies:

     This explains what has determined the boundary lines of the time belts.

   • 1915, Albert B. Olston, The Story of Time, page 71:

     It is found convenient generally to have a time belt fifteen degrees in width, that is to say the time belts generally include, each, fifteen degrees of longitude. Clocks at the two sides of such a time belt, keeping mean solar time, would be just one hour apart.

   • 1916, Augustus Orloff Thomas, Rural Arithmetic, page 142:

     Central Standard Time, the time of the 90th Meridian, is kept by all trains in the central time belt.

   • 2010, Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, page 198:

     Instead of a local time based upon the sun, it was necessary to have a conventional time belt, and to change abruptly by a whole hour when one entered the next time belt.

5. (rare) Synonym of timing belt
   • 2008, Intelligent Robotics and Applications, page 759:

     The powder falling tube automatic adjust device eliminates the gap between powder falling tube and time belt, so the quantity measurement of delivered powders is decided by the through hole size at the bottom of falling tube which guarantees delivering the pwders with accurate quantity.

   • 2008, Joseph Maldonado, The Untold Story, page 199:

     As they are traveling, the car hits a snag. The car gets as far as Manchester when the time belt breaks.