Word.ws English Dictionary

by now

by now prepositional phrase: the hour being what it is; the hour being so advanced; considering that it is so far in time already; now that so much time has elapsed; if not before, now at the latest.

Prepositional phrase

  1. The hour being what it is; the hour being so advanced; considering that it is so far in time already; now that so much time has elapsed; if not before, now at the latest.
    • Near-synonyms: already, at this stage, at this point
    • My parents ought to've arrived by now. I wonder what's keeping them.
    Synonyms:
    already, at this stage, at this point

Examples of by now in a sentence

  • Totally overwhelmed by now, I started to hand out the fliers willy-nilly.
  • By now an angry crowd had collected outside.
  • No doubt you will have heard the news by now.

Synonyms of by now

Origin of by now

See by, sense 3: “not later than (the given time); not later than the end of (the given time interval)”.

Questions about by now

What does by now mean?
By now means the hour being what it is; the hour being so advanced; considering that it is so far in time already; now that so much time has elapsed; if not before, now at the latest.
How do you use by now in a sentence?
Totally overwhelmed by now, I started to hand out the fliers willy-nilly.
What part of speech is by now?
By now is a prepositional phrase.

Words near by now in the dictionary

  1. by no manner of means
  2. by no means
  3. by no stretch
  4. by no stretch of imagination
  5. by no stretch of the imagination
  6. by now
  7. by numbers
  8. by one's lights
  9. by one's lonesome
  10. by one's own hand
  11. by oneself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by now (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “by now.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/by_now. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.