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An hourglass with a wing on each side, for time flying.
Also known as: Flying hourglass
The hourglass with a pair of wings — often one bat wing and one bird wing, representing night and day. Among the most distinctive carved motifs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and one whose meaning contemporaries stated explicitly.
Denotes the swift passage of life, conventionally glossed by the Latin tempus fugit — time flies.
17th–18th century especially · Contexts: History
Frequently carved with dissimilar wings, one feathered and one membranous like a bat's, a pairing usually read as day and night and so as time passing continuously.
The day-and-night reading is standard in the literature; the carvers left no statement of it.
An hourglass of two triangular bulbs joined at a waist, with a spread wing attached to each side, sometimes one feathered and one bat-like.
The winged form adds wings to the same glass and shifts the reading from time passing to time flying.