1. An instrument for registering the passage of time; a timepiece; formerly, a specially constructed timepiece for scientific use, a chronometer.
1686. Molyneux, Scioth. Telesc., Title-p., For Regulating and Adjusting Curious Pendulum-Watches and other Time-Keepers.
1764. Chron., in Ann. Reg., 99/2. Mr. Harrison’s new invented time-keeper.
1776. Cook, Voy. Pacific Ocean, I. i. (1784), I. 4. The Board, likewise, put into our possession the same watch, or time-keeper, which I had carried out in my last voyage, and had performed its part so well.
1878. Huxley, Physiogr., 7. True noon does not always coincide with 12 o’clock as indicated by an ordinary timekeeper.
transf. 1868. Lockyer, Guillemin’s Heavens (ed. 3), 6. According to the happy expression of Humboldt, they make of the Universe an eternal timekeeper.
b. Applied to an almanac. nonce-use.
1778. Miss Burney, Evelina, lxxviii. It would make me quite melancholy to have such a time-keeper in my pocket.
2. One who notes, measures, or records time; spec. a. one who is employed in keeping account of workmen’s hours of labor; b. one who beats time in music; c. one who marks the time occupied by a race, the rounds in a pugilistic encounter, etc.
1795. Southey, Lett. fr. Spain (1808), I. 294. The time-keeper … then turned up an hour-glass.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, I. 356/1. I went to a firm … at Beckenham, near Croydon, as working time-keeper, or foreman.
1879. ‘E. Garrett,’ House by Works, II. 185. A post as timekeeper at some great engineering works.
1903. Daily Chron., 28 Nov., 5/2. The Duke of Wellington called [Sir Thomas McDougall] Brisbane the ‘timekeeper of the Army.’
3. With qualifying word: A person or thing that keeps (good or bad) time.
1899. P. W. Hasluck, Clock Jobber’s Handbk., 2. Being very cheap and fair time-keepers, American clocks are exceedingly popular.
Mod. He is a good executant, but a bad time-keeper.
Hence Timekeepership, the position or office of a time-keeper. So Time-keeping sb., the keeping of time; adj. that keeps time (in various senses of the phrase: see TIME sb. 50.)
1816. Hervé, Beauties Paris, I. 211. No swing of the shoulders from side to side with graceless timekeeping.
1825. J. Nicholson, Operat. Mech., 522. This degree of time-keeping cannot reasonably be expected from any other clock.
1887. Pall Mall G., 16 Sept., 11/1. The need existed for a timekeeping watch at a low price.
1891. Wheeling, 25 Feb., 414/3. The Timekeepership of the London Centre.
1895. Daily News, 20 April, 2/1. The right of the employer to make reasonable regulations for time-keeping.
