contemporaneous

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin contemporāneus (“contemporary”) with the suffix -ous.^[2][3][4][5] The OED gives the Latin adjective as classical, in Aulus Gellius in the 2nd century AD;^[2] Barnhart and Etymonline call it Late Latin.^[4][6] It is formed from con- (“together, with”), tempus (“time”), and the adjective suffix -āneus,^[7][5][8] on the model of temporāneus (“timely”).^[2][6] It shares its Latin source with contemporary,^[6][9] and English had earlier the adjectives contemporan, contemporal and contemporanean (1550s).^[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Existing or happening in the same period as something: 1645, in Cornelius Burges's Necessity of Agreement with God.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the 1650s, and Barnhart and Merriam-Webster find it in Blount's Glossographia of 1656.^[6][4][5]

Semantic evolution

The word was used from the start, like contemporary, of things and people belonging to the same time.^[2][6] From 1659 it was also used of events happening at the very same moment.^[2] In the 19th century it came to be used of things of the same historical or geological period,^[3] and in 1871 it was first used of things belonging to the present day, a sense more usual in contemporary.^[2]

Timeline

• 1645 – existing or occurring in the same period as something.^[2]
• 1659 – happening at exactly the same time; simultaneous.^[2]
• 1671 – used without a following preposition.^[2]
• mid 19th century – of the same historical or geological period.^[3]
• 1871 – modern, current.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Existing, happening or originating in the same period of time: The two villages were contemporaneous with the earliest farms in the valley.^[10][5][2]
2. Happening at exactly the same moment; simultaneous.^[2]
3. Belonging to the same historical or geological period; of the same age.^[3]

Word family

• contemporaneity
• contemporaneously
• contemporaneousness
• noncontemporaneous

Related words

• contemporary
• contemporize
• temporal
• tempo

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins