In Panathenaicus, Isocrates writes that educated people are those “who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action”. Kairos was central to the Sophists, who stressed the rhetor’s ability to adapt to and take advantage of changing, contingent circumstances. In rhetoric, kairos is “a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved.” Kairos is also an alternate spelling of the minor Greek deity Caerus, the god of luck and opportunity. For example, in The Suppliants, a drama written by Euripides, Adrastus describes the ability to influence and change another person’s mind by “aiming their bow beyond the kairos.” Kairos in general was formulated as a tool to explain and understand the interposition of humans for their actions and the due consequences. In the literature of the classical period, writers and orators used kairos to specify moments when the opportune action was made, often through metaphors involving archery and one’s ability to aim and fire at the exact right time on-target. Both examples are a show of an exact choice needed to be made. White describes it as,“long, tunnel-like aperture through which the archer’s arrow has to pass,” and “when the weaver must draw the yarn through a gap that momentarily opens in the warp of the cloth being woven”. Similarly enough, E.C White published a work called Kaironomia, where he talks about this same concept. In weaving, kairos denotes the moment in which the shuttle could be passed through threads on the loom.
In archery, kairos denotes the moment in which an arrow may be fired with sufficient force to penetrate a target. In Onians’s 1951 etymological studies of the word, he traces the primary root back to the ancient Greek association with both archery and weaving. Kairos is a term, idea, and practice that has been applied in several fields including classical rhetoric, modern rhetoric, digital media, Christian theology, and science. The plural, καιροί ( kairoi (Ancient and Modern Greek)) means the times. Kairos also means weather in Modern Greek.
While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative, permanent nature. The former refers to chronological or sequential time, while the latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos ( χρόνος) and kairos. Kairos ( Ancient Greek: καιρός) is an Ancient Greek word meaning the right, critical, or opportune moment.