In June, the Oxford English Dictionary added a long list of new words to its definitive lexicon. Among the new abbreviations, one stood out as a particularly timely symbol: “tl;dr”. I hope it doesn’t apply to this article: too long; didn’t read.

A few years ago, Oxford University Press unveiled a list of the most commonly used nouns. In a survey of books, newspapers, Hansard and online blogs, researchers found that Month was at number 40, Life was at number 9, Day was 5, and Year was 3. But the most commonly used noun in the English language was Time.

The survey observed that our language relies on time not merely as a single word, but as a philosophy: more actions and phrases depend on time than any other. On time, last time, fine time, recovery time, quality time, all-time. The list goes on for, well, a long time.

Are our lives now dominated by the clock – primarily the digital atomic clock transmitted to our computers and phones – in ways that have become both absurd and dangerous? Will we soon be marking everything we encounter tl;dr?