Time Waits For No Man

Time waits for no man is an idiom that expresses the inevitability of some of the constant things in our lives.

Things like this includes birth, death, the passage of time, and so on.

The extended version of the expression is “time and tide wait for no man”.

It can be interpreted as: “no one can stop or control time”, which is fairly close to the meaning mentioned above.

The term is originated from Saint Mahrer, a German saint from the 13^th century, whose original quote was: “And te tide and te time þat tu iboren were, schal beon iblescet”.

Saint Mahrer was the first one to put this proverb into writing.

Another early record of this term can be found in Chaucer’s Prologue to the Clark’s Tale, a codex, which was written in the late 14^th century.

Time waits for no man became a fairly popular expression among musicians during the 20^th century.

Keida Brawer, otherwise known as Rasco, named his first album after the idiom. The album came out in 1998 at Stones Throw Records.

Another example of the term being used for a song title is Eddie Berman’s Time Waits for No Man, which is a more recent example. It was released in 2022, January.