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Jiffy

//ˈd͡ʒɪ.fi// noun, slang

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A very short, unspecified length of time. colloquial

    "I’ll be back in a jiffy."

  2. 2
    Alternative form of Jiffy bag. alt-of, alternative
  3. 3
    a very short time (as the time it takes the eye to blink or the heart to beat) wordnet
  4. 4
    A unit of time defined by the frequency of its basic timer – historically, and by convention, 0.01 of a second, but some computer operating systems use other values.

    "The FOR...NEXT loop for TIME increments by STEP 2 (every two jiffies) for two reasons: 1) the printing of 60 jiffies a second is too fast to read, and 2) the printing of each jiffy takes longer than its incrementations; this would delay the loop, so the printing of TIME$ is slower than it should be."

  5. 5
    The length of an alternating current power cycle (1/60 or 1/50 of a second).
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  1. 6
    The time taken for light to travel a specified distance in a vacuum, usually one centimetre (approximately 33.3564 picoseconds), but sometimes one foot or the width of a nucleon.
  2. 7
    Ellipsis of jiffy bag, a padded envelope. UK, abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis

Etymology

Origin unknown; said to have been thieves’ cant for “lightning”. Also formerly written "giffy", to which a connection with gliff has been proposed. As a kind of envelope, a genericization of Jiffy bag.

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