sekunda

Sekunda is a term used in several languages to denote the unit of time known in English as the second. In many Slavic and some neighboring languages, including Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Russian, Bulgarian and others, sekunda is the standard word for the SI unit of time. The symbol for the unit is s, and the second is defined by the International System of Units as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the cesium-133 atom.

Etymology and usage across languages trace back to Latin secundus, meaning “following” or “second.” In everyday use, sekunda functions as the basic unit for measuring time, duration, and events in clocks and timetables in regions where the term is common.

In music theory, sekunda also denotes the interval known in English as a second: the difference between adjacent pitches. This can be a minor second or a major second, depending on the context. Some languages describe these intervals explicitly as kleine sekunde (minor second) and große sekunde (major second) in German, or sekunda mała / sekunda wielka in Polish.

Beyond timekeeping and music, sekunda can appear in ordinal or classificatory phrases meaning “the second” in a sequence or ranking, mirroring its general sense in many languages. The term remains closely tied to the universal concept of a unit of duration and its linguistic variants.