time flies

Idioms  

1. Time passes quickly, as in It's midnight already? Time flies when you're having fun, or I guess it's ten years since I last saw you—how time flies. This idiom was first recorded about 1800 but Shakespeare used a similar phrase, “the swiftest hours, as they flew,” as did Alexander Pope, “swift fly the years.”

---

Example Sentences

It’s incredibly taxing mentally, but once you get into a flow and lose yourself, time flies.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 7, 2024

The old saying "time flies when you're having fun" is an easy way to think about the idea of post-concert amnesia.

From BBC • Jun. 1, 2023

But as time flies by, it will bloom outward in expanding shells or rings of gas and dust.

From Scientific American • Mar. 17, 2023

Conventional wisdom tells us that life is short, time flies and there are never enough hours in the day.

From New York Times • Dec. 7, 2022

There’s another thing that’s strange about the library, it seems like time flies when you’re in one.

From "Bud, Not Buddy" by Christopher Paul Curtis