— contemporarily , adv. — contemporariness , n.
/keuhn tem"peuh rer'ee/ , adj., n., pl. contemporaries .
adj.
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.
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.
n.
4. a person belonging to the same time or period with another or others.
5. a person of the same age as another.
[ 1625-35; contempor- (see CONTEMPORIZE) + -ARY ]
Syn. 1. coexistent, concurrent, simultaneous. 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.