Idköz

Időköz (often written as időköz in Hungarian) is a Hungarian noun meaning a period or gap of time between two instants. It denotes the length of time that separates two events or moments and is used in both everyday language and technical writing. The term is formed from idő meaning “time” and köz meaning “gap” or “interval.” It is closely related to, but not always interchangeable with, időintervallum (time interval) and időtartam (duration). An időköz typically emphasizes the separation between events rather than the duration of a single event.

In everyday use, the word can describe the pause or waiting period between happenings. In more formal contexts, it may appear in discussions of temporal data or processes, where it can refer to the time separating successive events. In statistics or data analysis, an analogous concept is the interarrival time, describing the waiting time between occurrences in a stochastic process; Hungarian texts may use időköz in a similar sense, though the exact terminology might prefer longer forms such as időintervallum.

In scheduling, project management, or manufacturing, the concept of reducing idle time between phases is described with terms that convey the idea of shortening the időköz to improve efficiency. Distinct from the duration of a single task, the időköz remains the gap that separates tasks or events.

See also: time interval, interarrival time, downtime, time gap, duration.