What is it when time is divided?

You could say he worked on the task intermittently, that he made spaces in his schedule, that he worked on it from time to time...

Like you say, time cannot be cut into pieces, but it can be plural. Eg he was generally busy with his research but there were times when he was able to perform this other task.

Thank you.

If I want to express the following idea, in what way should I say?



Here "tiny pieces of time" refers to short periods when you squeeze time out of your full schedule.

Subdivision of time...

Of course you can "cut time up" into pieces! You can "cut it up" into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds. Also less precisely you can have moments, periods, spells, instants, and so on.

Common phrases for what you are describing are "spare moments", "slack times", "snatched moments", "stolen moments" "less busy moments (or times)" etc etc

Referring to your quoted sentence, this sentence expresses the idea:-

My mother worked in a factory in Paris. In spare moments she taught herself French.

What is it when time is divided?
For one thing, I'd say "fragments of time" rather than "fragmentary time" which doesn't really mean anything relevant.

What is it when time is divided?
And I wouldn't say "tiny pieces of time", but "tiny bits of time".
"Bits" seems to me to be less limited to physical/tangible segments than "pieces". although you could say "bits and pieces of time" - that sounds more natural, to me, anyway.

Thank you a million, contrex and Tomkitten.

Referring to , what other words can you come up with?

And how to refer to a long period which is not interrupted by some other people or matters, so that you can focus your attention on a single task?

What is it when time is divided?


Heaven.

a uninterrupted spell or period perhaps. English is not a language which has a specific word for every possible thing. You would choose a word for a non specific, non-trivial length of time, eg spell, period, etc and preface it with an adjective such as uninterrupted or clear.