Kairos
Etymology
Greek "kairos" meant the critical or opportune moment, once linked to an archer’s narrow window to loose an arrow. The Greeks set it against "chronos," sequential clock-time. Rhetoricians prized kairos as the art of saying the right thing at exactly the right moment.
noun · /KY-ross/
The right, opportune moment to act — qualitative time, as opposed to time as mere duration.
What it names
The difference between a moment that is simply next and one that is ripe, the window in which an act will land.
Example
The pitch was flawless, but she misjudged the kairos — raising it the morning after the layoffs, when no one could hear it.
Related idea
The counterpart to clock-time; a sense of kairos is what keeps an act from becoming an anachronism, a thing done out of its proper time.
See also