time bombn.
/ˈtʌɪm bɒm/, U.S. /ˈtaɪm ˌbɑm/ 1.
a. A bomb set to explode at a particular time.
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society > armed hostility > military equipment > weapon > explosive device > [noun] > bomb > time bomb
time bomb1893
ticking bomb1960
1893 Daily Tel. 9 Nov. 5/7 The engine of destruction was not a time bomb.
1898 World (N.Y.) 18 Feb. Cubans or Spanish..secreted..a time bomb near the tons of piled powder.
1940 War Illustr. 4 Oct. 338 The Bomb Disposal Sections of the Royal Engineers whose job it is to dig up and destroy the time-bombs.
1986 Daily Tel. (Sydney) (Nexis) 21 Oct. A car bomb exploded in Athens today..only a few hours after a time-bomb blasted a police station in the centre of the city.
2003 C. Rubenberg Palestinians iv. 164 In October 1982, settlers planted a time bomb in the stands of Hebron's Hussein School soccer field.
b. figurative. A person or thing regarded as likely to lead to or cause a sudden catastrophic event at some point in the future.
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the world > action or operation > harm or detriment > danger > [noun] > instance or cause of > imminent
sword of Damocles1747
time bomb1922
1922 C. L. de Chambrun Playing with Souls ix. 153 Poor Mrs. Dale judged this species of time-bomb unsafe to meddle with.
1941 B. Schulberg What makes Sammy Run? vi. 128 Sammy Glick is a time bomb in my brain and it's going to go off.
1960 Lowell (Mass.) Sun 23 July 10/5 West Berlin..has been a ticking time bomb for some time.
1966 N. Nicolson Diaries & Lett. H. Nicolson 275 Harold Nicolson had long been aware that a constitutional time-bomb was ticking beneath the throne.
2003 Weekend Austral. (Brisbane) 15 Mar. 38/1 Those refinancings are a time bomb that could squeeze bank profits.
2. Computing. A series of instructions surreptitiously incorporated in a program in such a way that they will be carried out when a particular time arrives, usually with harmful results. Cf. logic bomb n. at logic n. Additions.
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society > computing and information technology > programming language > program or code > [noun] > logic bomb
logic bomb1978
time bomb1978
1978 Times 17 Nov. 23/7 Computer crime... The planting of instructions to come into action at a given time is known as a time bomb or logic bomb.
1989 Times 21 Dec. 5 A Trojan Horse time bomb will destroy sensitive electronic files unless funds are sent in return for a decontamination disc, the blackmailers say.
2003 R. Dawkins Devil's Chaplain (2004) iii. ii. 132 Some large companies go so far as to set aside one ‘miner's canary’ among their fleet of computers, and advance its internal calendar a week so that any time-bomb viruses will reveal themselves prematurely.
Compounds
General attributive.
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1916 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 14 May 18/4 Attorneys for the North Pacific line..had a theory that a time-bomb explosion caused the wreck.
1939 D. Thomas Map of Love 21 Strike in the time-bomb town.
1991 St. Petersburg (Florida) Times (Nexis) 15 Dec. 1 d [He] had been sworn in as Lebanon's president..after his brother Bashir was killed in a time bomb attack.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2012; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1893