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contemporary

American  

[kuhn-tem-puh-rer-ee] / kənˈtɛm pəˌrɛr i /

adjective

1. 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

2. of about the same age or date.

   a Georgian table with a contemporary wig stand.

3. of the present time; modern.

   a lecture on the contemporary novel.

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noun

• contemporaries
  plural

1. a person belonging to the same time or period with another or others.

2. a person of the same age as another.

contemporary British  

/ kənˈtɛmprərɪ /

adjective

1. belonging to the same age; living or occurring in the same period of time

2. existing or occurring at the present time

3. conforming to modern or current ideas in style, fashion, design, etc

4. having approximately the same age as one another

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noun

1. a person living at the same time or of approximately the same age as another

2. something that is contemporary

3. 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

Synonym Usage

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

Derived Forms

• contemporariness
  noun
• noncontemporary
  adjective
• postcontemporary
  adjective
• ultracontemporary
  adjective
• uncontemporary
  adjective
• contemporarily
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• contemporaries
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of contemporary

First recorded in 1625–35; from Late Latin contemporārius, equivalent to Latin con- con- ( def. ) + tempor- (stem of tempus “time”; cf. temporal ¹ ( def. )) + -ārius -ary ( def. )

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Explanation

Things that are contemporary are either happening at the same time or happening now. Contemporary art is recent art. In history class, if you hear that one famous person was a contemporary of another, that means they lived at the same time. Contemporaries are people and things from the same time period. Contemporary can also describe things happening now or recently. It's common to speak of contemporary music or contemporary furniture, for example. Those things are new, not old. Anything characteristic of the present day can be called contemporary.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

contemporary contemporaries

Games companies must keep innovating when linking contemporary audiences to the past, says Wulf, in order satisfy their desire for fresh experiences.

From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2026

Cemeteries are the living landscapes of collective memory, and without new generations of graves, they grow increasingly disconnected from contemporary life.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026

This is a contemporary novel through and through, and Schoenbrun writes with practiced conviction, subtly differentiating the different characters’ perspectives without dropping the pace.

From Salon ● Oct. 29, 2026

And in the high-fashion world, model Gabbriette Bechtel embodies the edginess of contemporary Latina Goth looks, one that upends vintage Chicana beauty conventions by pushing them into a more avant-garde space.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2026

“I knew that the results I obtained were not easily compatible with our contemporary science,” Mendel wrote, and “an isolated experiment might be doubly dangerous.”

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Considered alongside an excellent lineup of contemporaries, “You Can See Everything” stresses that the genre isn’t about uncovering truths, but playing with our subjective relationship to them.

From Salon ● Oct. 28, 2026

Wilson’s democratic faith is the heart of Mr. Wegman’s account: “No other founder foresaw more accurately where America was headed—a country more democratic, more inclusive, and more egalitarian than any of his contemporaries dared imagine.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2026

According to Mr. Rovelli, he did “excellent physics” and was “more intelligent . . . than the contemporaries I know.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2026

“If you think about who her contemporaries and peers are, there’s something quite radical about her putting her body in so much of that work, especially that early work,” Grossman said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026

In fact, various contemporaries of Newton had raised the problem, and the Olbers article was not even the first to contain plausible arguments against it.

From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking

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Related Words

• new
• present-day

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