contemporary

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   belonging to the present time

   contemporary leaders

2. 2
   adj

   characteristic of the present

   contemporary trends in design

3. 3
   adj

   From the same time period, coexistent in time; contemporaneous.

   A neighb'ring Wood born with himself he sees, / And loves his old contemporary trees.

4. 4
   adj

   Modern, of the present age (shorthand for ‘contemporary with the present’).

   We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.

5. 5
   noun

   Someone or something belonging to the same time period (as someone or something else)

   Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare.

6. 6
   adj

   occurring in the same period of time

7. 7
   noun

   a person of nearly the same age as another

8. 8
   noun

   Something existing at the same time.

Etymology

From Medieval Latin contemporārius, from Latin con- (“with, together”) + temporārius, an adjective derived from tempus (“time”).