contemporary
Americanadjective
-
existing, occurring, or living at the same time; belonging to the same time.
Newton's discovery of the calculus was contemporary with that of Leibniz.
- Synonyms:
- simultaneous, concurrent, coexistent
-
of about the same age or date.
a Georgian table with a contemporary wig stand.
-
of the present time; modern.
a lecture on the contemporary novel.
noun
plural
contemporaries-
a person belonging to the same time or period with another or others.
-
a person of the same age as another.
adjective
-
belonging to the same age; living or occurring in the same period of time
-
existing or occurring at the present time
-
conforming to modern or current ideas in style, fashion, design, etc
-
having approximately the same age as one another
noun
-
a person living at the same time or of approximately the same age as another
-
something that is contemporary
-
journalism a rival newspaper
Usage
Since contemporary can mean either of the same period or of the present period, it is best to avoid this word where ambiguity might arise, as in a production of Othello in contemporary dress. Modern dress or Elizabethan dress should be used in this example to avoid ambiguity
Related Words
Contemporary, contemporaneous, coeval, coincident all mean happening or existing at the same time. Contemporary often refers to persons or their acts or achievements: Hemingway and Fitzgerald, though contemporary, shared few values. Contemporaneous is applied chiefly to events: the rise of industrialism, contemporaneous with the spread of steam power. Coeval refers either to very long periods of time—an era or an eon—or to remote or long ago times: coeval stars, shining for millenia with equal brilliance; coeval with the dawning of civilization. Coincident means occurring at the same time but without causal or other relationships: prohibition, coincident with the beginning of the 1920s.
Other Word Forms
- contemporarily adverb
- contemporariness noun
- noncontemporary adjective
- postcontemporary adjective
- ultracontemporary adjective
- uncontemporary adjective
Etymology
Origin of contemporary
First recorded in 1625–35; from Late Latin contemporārius, equivalent to Latin con- con- ( def. ) + tempor- (stem of tempus “time”; temporal 1 ( def. ) ) + -ārius -ary ( def. )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
That segment is far outnumbered by people who may fit the contemporary definition of philistines, non-religious viewers who are only in it for the pulse-pounding swordplay and palace intrigue.
From Salon
Much of this squares with Mencken’s character portrait of the “booboisie,” the unthinking type of American whose numbers seem to have exploded in recent decades, perhaps in interaction with contemporary historical events.
From Salon
But it was “striking” that so many male contemporaries “saw them as disruptors of family harmony and alienators of women from their husbands.”
Drawing on contemporary color standards and systems such as Munsell’s, he set out to do something deceptively difficult: translate the scientific lexicon into terms everyday readers could understand.
“My point is the contemporary oil price spike is quite small compared to any during the past 40 years which resulted in any meaningful rise in inflation,” says Paulsen.
From MarketWatch
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
