Understanding output of ps -ef on linux

If you run man ps then type /SpaceShift+CSpaceEnter, you should see this line.

 C pcpu cpu utilization 

but that's under the OBSOLETE SORT KEYS header, so is not what we're looking for.

Press n to find the next match:

 c C processor utilization. Currently, this is the integer value of the percent usage over the lifetime of the process. (see %cpu). 

which sounds right. For more details, we search for %cpu and find:

 %cpu %CPU cpu utilization of the process in "##.#" format. Currently, it is the CPU time used divided by the time the process has been running cputime/realtime ratio), expressed as a percentage. ... (alias pcpu). 

And TIME has two matches, but only one that matches the hh:mm:ss format:

 cputime TIME cumulative CPU time, "[DD-]hh:mm:ss" format. (alias time). 

Cumulative CPU time is the amount of time the processor spent running the process, i.e. actually using CPU cycles, not sleeping, waiting to run, or waiting for I/O.

It's determined by summing the utime and stime values that are described in the proc(5) man page.

 utime %lu Amount of time that this process has been scheduled in user mode... stime %lu Amount of time that this process has been scheduled in kernel mode...