time before time
Era preceding everything
Time before time refers to the most ancient past imaginable—an era so remote it precedes recorded history, memory, or even the existence of time as we understand it.
The phrase appears in creation myths, fantasy narratives, and poetic contexts to evoke primordial origins: In the time before time, the gods walked among mortals.
It suggests a period outside ordinary chronology, when the rules of the present world had not yet been established.
- ages agoThe remote past
- day gone byEarlier time, now past
- old as dirtExceedingly, comically ancient
- pastTime already gone
- primordial chaosFormless state before creation
the old days · cosmic egg · infinity · golden age · infinite regress · primordial soup · creation myth · first cause · timelessness · in the beginning · cosmic inflation · antediluvian · multiverse theory · Dreamtime · spacetime continuum · void · ex nihilo · Genesis
time before timetime after time
Happening many occasions repeatedly
end of days · end times · doomsday · eternity
time before timethe here and now
time, times, timed, timing, timely, timeless, timer, overtime, sometime