English · Idiom Candidate

sign of the times

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Indication of current trends or circumstances

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Dấu hiệu của xu hướng hoặc hoàn cảnh hiện tại

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: symbol of the present era

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

That he was prepared to do so to retain his position was, in itself, a sign of changing times.

The break - up of the old world was seen as a sign of the last times.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “sign of the times” mean?

Indication of current trends or circumstances Literally: symbol of the present era

Is “sign of the times” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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