‘Lost time’

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Has anyone ever seen that expression used anywhere or heard it used outside the film medium? I have tried researching it and Collins and all respectable dictionaries only list it in the ‘We have no time to lose’ context or as a synonym of ‘waste time’.

When I watched Primal Fear over a decade ago I assumed Aaron saying ‘I lost time’ was an authorial term/concept to describe how he feels when
WARNING: spoilers below
the “multiple personality disorder” takes over. The judge or someone in the trial scene actually asks him, ‘What does it mean - you lost time?’
I thought it was exclusive to Primal Fear.

But Season 3 of Hannibal uses the exact same expression to describe how the Tooth Fairy/Francis Dolarhyde is feeling. What’s up with that? Is there any evidence that this expression actually refers to a lack of awareness of oneself/losing memory or something like that?

Edit: Hannibal also uses it in Season 1 for Will, I think, once.



Yeah, I remember the first time I heard it, too, and I had a similar reaction: it was new to me. I probably was a teenager the first time I heard it. But I've heard it plenty since, and yeah, just means "blacked out" basically. No memory of something. But more than just "I don't happen to remember a specific thing," it seems to exclusively mean prolonged blank spots where memories should be.



The first thing that came to my mind was the phenomenon of missing time referenced by alien abductees.

“It is not perceived as a break in which something happens and then a resumption. It is… remembered as continuous and… the half hour trip… turns out to be a two hour trip or whatever, and this is sometimes experienced in conjunction with a UFO sighting or something like a light, but not always.”

Prob dosnt help just thinking out loud



The first thing that came to my mind was the phenomenon of missing time referenced by alien abductees.

“It is not perceived as a break in which something happens and then a resumption. It is… remembered as continuous and… the half hour trip… turns out to be a two hour trip or whatever, and this is sometimes experienced in conjunction with a UFO sighting or something like a light, but not always.”

Prob dosnt help just thinking out loud
No, that’s pretty insightful, but they don’t seem to be using that exact expression. (I note you yourself said ‘missing time’ which I have heard used). It was a linguistic query on my part, if anything, the phenomenon itself is well-known and I, for one, could not remember any emails I sent off at work during a migraine attack. I stared at my inbox the next day and thought someone was having me on.



I forgot the opening line.
From the Wikipedia article ThatDarnMKS just linked for us :

"Sometimes dissociative fugue cannot be diagnosed until people return to their pre-fugue identity and are distressed to find themselves in unfamiliar circumstances, sometimes with awareness of "lost time". The diagnosis is usually made retroactively when a doctor reviews the history and collects information that documents the circumstances before people left home, the travel itself, and the establishment of an alternative life."

Emphasis mine. I think I was pretty aware of the term, but obviously I can't trace where or when I first heard it and/or used it.