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Contemporary vs Today - What's the difference?

contemporary | today |

As nouns the difference between contemporary and today

is that contemporary is someone or something living at the same time, or of roughly the same age as another while today is a current day or date.

As an adjective contemporary

is from the same time period, coexistent in time.

As an adverb today is

on the current day or date.

contemporary

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • From the same time period, coexistent in time.
  • * Cowley
  • A grove born with himself he sees, / And loves his old contemporary trees.
  • * Strype
  • This king was contemporary with the greatest monarchs of Europe.
  • Modern, of the present age.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01
  • , author=Robert L. Dorit , title=Rereading Darwin , volume=100, issue=1, page=23 , magazine= citation , passage=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.}}
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2012 , date=May 24 , author=Nathan Rabin , title=Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3 , work=The Onion AV Club citation , page= , passage=Men In Black 3 finagles its way out of this predicament by literally resetting the clock with a time-travel premise that makes Will Smith both a contemporary intergalactic cop in the late 1960s and a stranger to Josh Brolin, who plays the younger version of Smith’s stone-faced future partner, Tommy Lee Jones.}}
  • Relatively recent
  • Synonyms

    * contemporaneous

    Antonyms

    * anachronistic: in the wrong time period * archaic

    Noun

    (contemporaries)
  • Someone or something living at the same time, or of roughly the same age as another.
  • ''Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare.
    ''The early mammals inherited the earth by surviving their saurian contemporaries .
  • Something existing at the same time.
  • today

    English

    Alternative forms

    * to-day (archaic)

    Adverb

    (-)
  • On the current day or date.
  • In the current era; nowadays.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title=[http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21579879-buy-out-firm-really-does-focus-operational-improvements-engineers Engineers of a different kind] , passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A current day or date.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1899, author=(Hughes Mearns)
  • , title= , passage=Yesterday, upon the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there / He wasn’t there again today  / I wish, I wish he’d go away …}}

    Synonyms

    * current day * this day

    Usage notes

    Todays is a mostly literary plural. It refers to days that we experience, have experienced or will experience as "today". More colloquial are (these days) and (nowadays).

    See also

    * nowadays * hodiernal * yesterday * tomorrow night * tonight * last night * nudiustertian