Word.ws English Dictionary

contemp

contemp is the abbreviation of contemporary.

Meaning of contemporary

Noun

contemporary (plural contemporaries)

  1. Someone or something belonging to the same time period (as someone or something else)
    • Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare.
  2. Something existing at the same time.
    1. (dated) A rival newspaper or magazine.
      • Annexation therefore was inevitable; but (as I have said above) it was not necessarily of prime importance in our national policy, and there has been no need to exaggerate—as I fear many of our contemporaries have exaggerated— […]1900, The Speaker, the Liberal Review, volume 2, page 621

See all 5 meanings of contemporary

Forms of contemp

pluralcontemps

Questions about contemp

What is contemp the abbreviation of?
Contemp is the abbreviation of contemporary.

Words near contemp in the dictionary

  1. contemning
  2. contemningly
  3. contemnor
  4. contemnors
  5. contemns
  6. contemp
  7. contemp.
  8. contemper
  9. contemperate
  10. contemperates
  11. contemperation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contemp (page history and authors); contemporary (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: “contemp.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contemp. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.