Ajamärk

Ajamärk is a term used in Estonian to denote a time marker—a sign or datum that indicates when an event occurred or when data were recorded. It is commonly used in technical, archival, and linguistic contexts to enable temporal ordering and reference.

Origin and meaning: The word combines aeg (time) and märk (mark). In practice, ajamärk can refer to timestamps in digital systems, but it may also appear in linguistic transcripts to mark temporal references or in metadata to describe the time context of a resource.

Formats and representations: In computing, an ajamärk is commonly stored as a timestamp according to standards such as ISO 8601 (for example 2025-01-01T12:34:56Z) or as a numeric epoch value. In archival metadata, it may appear as a date, a time, or both. Some systems also use time codes or duration markers that serve related purposes.

Applications: Logs, databases, and event streams rely on ajamärk to order events, support time-based queries, and synchronize processes. In media production and broadcasting, time marks coordinate playback and scheduling. In linguistics, ajamärk helps annotate occurrences of events or tense with temporal markers within texts.

See also: timestamp, timecode, metadata, ISO 8601. Notes: The term is primarily used in Estonian-language contexts; near-equivalents exist in other languages as timestamp or time mark.