/ˈtempərəl/
[adjective] Relating to time, or to the practical and worldly aspects of life rather than spiritual ones. It can also describe things that last for only a limited period.
The word 'temporal' hides two completely different meanings inside one body — time and the skull — and both come from the same ancient root.
At the heart of 'temporal' sits the Latin word 'tempus', meaning 'time'. This was one of the most important words in the Roman world, used by philosophers, poets, and lawyers alike to describe the passing of moments, seasons, and eras. From 'tempus', Latin formed the adjective 'temporalis', meaning 'of or belonging to time', and it is this form that travelled into medieval English. The word arrived in English in the 14th century, passing through Old French 'temporel' before settling into Middle English as 'temporal'. At first, English speakers used it mainly to contrast the church with the wider world — 'temporal' affairs were earthly, time-bound concerns, as opposed to the eternal, spiritual realm. Lords and bishops argued over temporal versus ecclesiastical power for centuries, and the word carried enormous political weight in medieval life.
The idea behind the word is beautifully simple: whatever belongs to time is temporary, limited, and mortal. This connects 'temporal' to a rich family of English words. Latin 'tempus' gave us 'temporary' (lasting only for a time), 'tempo' (borrowed directly from Italian, itself from Latin, meaning the speed or time of music), and 'tense' in the grammatical sense — the form of a verb that tells you when something happens. Each of these words carries the same ancient idea of time flowing and measuring human experience.
There is also 'contemporary', which follows the chain: Latin 'con-' (together) plus 'temporalis' → Late Latin 'contemporalis' → French 'contemporain' → English 'contemporary', meaning existing at the same time as someone or something else. And 'extemporaneous' follows a similar path: Latin 'ex tempore' (out of time, meaning on the spur of the moment) → Latin 'extemporaneus' → English 'extemporaneous', describing something done without preparation. The Latin root also fed into 'temporize', meaning to delay or play for time — a strategy as old as politics itself.
But 'temporal' carries a second, completely separate meaning that surprises most people: it also refers to the temples of the human skull — those flat areas on either side of the head just behind the eyes. This is not a coincidence or a mix-up. The same Latin word 'tempus' was used by Roman anatomists to name this part of the head, most likely because the hair at the temples is often the first place where grey appears — a visible sign of time passing on a person's face. So the temples of your head are, quite literally, 'time's markers'. From this anatomical use, medicine developed terms like 'temporal lobe', the region of the brain associated with memory and language, and 'temporal artery', the blood vessel you can sometimes feel pulsing at the side of your head.
This double life of the word — governing both abstract philosophy and human anatomy — makes 'temporal' unusually rich. Few words can honestly claim to describe both the nature of earthly existence and the shape of a human skull. Yet both meanings rest on the same ancient Roman intuition: that time writes itself on the body, and the side of the head was where Romans chose to read it. Over the centuries, English speakers have largely forgotten this connection, using the two senses in entirely separate conversations — historians and theologians in one room, doctors and neuroscientists in another — without realising they are all speaking the same ancient word.