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vocabulary
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contemporary

used in a sentence
2 meanings
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1  —as in:
contemporary design
Definition characteristic of or belonging to the present time
  • It's easier to find outstanding books when selecting from those that have been in print for a long time, but were it not for that I would prefer modern literature with its contemporary language, issues, and ideas.
contemporary = characteristic of or belonging to the present time
Other Uses (with this meaning)
  • We're visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art.
    • contemporary = characteristic of or belonging to the present time
  • I have begun to stop resisting the constant urge to deny that beauty has a valid right to exist in contemporary art.
    Ian Hornak
    • contemporary = characteristic of or belonging to the present time
  • At this writing, only England has held back before the temptations of contemporary diabolism.
    Arthur Miller  --  The Crucible
    • contemporary = belonging to the present time
  • Well, because Hawthorne's work is so extraordinary and applicable to contemporary society, I want each of you to write a report pertaining to the novel.
    Kody Keplinger  --  The DUFF: (Designated Ugly Fat Friend)
    • contemporary = belonging to the present time
  • As Saeed was coming down from the hill to where Nadia again sat by their tent, a young woman was leaving the contemporary art gallery she worked at in Vienna.
    Moshin Hamid  --  Exit West
    • contemporary = belonging to the present time
  • He pulled me away toward the door, and I followed him while Van Houten ranted to Lidewij about the ingratitude of contemporary teenagers and the death of polite society, and Lidewij, somewhat hysterical, shouted back at him in rapid-fire Dutch.
    John Green  --  The Fault in Our Stars
    • contemporary = belonging to the present time
  • Toward the end of June, Chris, still in Atlanta, mailed his parents a copy of his final grade report: A in Apartheid and South African Society and History of Anthropological Thought; A minus in Contemporary African Politics and the Food Crisis in Africa.
    Jon Krakauer  --  Into the Wild
    • contemporary = belonging to the present time
  • Contemporary legends such as the "underground pipe-line to Canada" attached themselves to him, and there was one persistent story that he didn't live in a house at all, but in a boat that looked like a house and was moved secretly up and down the Long Island shore.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald  --  The Great Gatsby
    • contemporary = belonging to the present time
  • When she had had enough electricity to charge her backup battery, she would lounge around and listen to her records in the light of a single bare bulb, the harsh sounds of the fighting muffled somewhat by her music, and she would then glance at her windows and think that they looked a bit like amorphous black works of contemporary art.
    Moshin Hamid  --  Exit West
contemporary = belonging to the present time

Dictionary / pronunciation — Google®Dictionary list — Onelook.com®
2  —as in:
they are contemporaries
Definition living at the same time

or:

something occurring in the same period of time as something else
  • Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were contemporary artists who competed for some projects.
contemporary = lived at the same time
Other Uses (with this meaning)
  • The composer Salieri was contemporary with Mozart
    • contemporary = lived at the same time
  • Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
    William Faulkner
  • He was much older than the parents of our school contemporaries, and there was nothing Jem or I could say about him when our classmates said, "My father-"
    Harper Lee  --  To Kill a Mockingbird
    • contemporaries = people of about the same age
  • This, from a contemporary critic's commentary on Madame Butterfly: "Pinkerton suffers from .... being an obnoxious bounder whom every man in the audience itches to kick."
    David Henry Hwang  --  M. Butterfly
    • contemporary = something occurring in the same period of time as something else
  • The authority which we have chiefly followed—a manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some of whom had known Hester Prynne, while others had heard the tale from contemporary witnesses fully confirms the view taken in the foregoing pages.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne  --  The Scarlet Letter
    • contemporary = living in her time
  • The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and famous John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne  --  The Scarlet Letter
    • contemporaries = people who live or lived at the same time
  • The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had a long established and legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne  --  The Scarlet Letter
    • contemporaries = people who live or lived at the same time
  • Like her seventeenth-century contemporaries, Anna did not know what plague was or how it spread.
    Geraldine Brooks  --  Year of Wonders
  • As for the others in my story, in the early 1970s nearly all of my contemporaries were sent to the countryside for "reeducation."
    Ji-Li Jiang  --  Red Scarf Girl

Dictionary / pronunciation — Google®Dictionary list — Onelook.com®
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