Timing is choosing the right moment to do something. Good timing means acting when conditions are best for success, like telling a joke right when everyone's relaxed and ready to laugh, or asking your parents about getting a pet when they're in a great mood rather than when they just got home from a stressful day.

In sports, timing matters enormously. A basketball player needs perfect timing to jump and catch an alley-oop pass. A batter in baseball studies a pitcher's timing to know exactly when to swing. Comedians spend years developing their timing, learning precisely how long to pause before a punchline.

Sometimes timing is about patience: knowing when to wait and when to act. A chess player with good timing knows when to attack and when to defend. A student with good timing might study hard all semester rather than cramming the night before a test.

Bad timing means doing the right thing at the wrong moment, like interrupting someone right when they're concentrating, or showing up after everyone else has finished. When something unfortunate happens, people sometimes say “that's bad timing” or “what terrible timing.”

The word can also refer to measuring or recording time, like the timing of a race: “Her timing was 12.4 seconds for the 100-meter dash.”