now

Adjective

now (not comparable)

1. Present; current.
   • […] to my now wife Mabell, my child Elisabeth, & my child now begotten, &c., and they to be joint Exõrs, & if all die, then the same jointly to my brother William Every & my sisters Sarah Skibbowe & Joan Brice.1630 November 19, Alexander Every, will quoted in 1887, Frederick Arthur Crisp, Abstracts of Somersetshire Wills Etc: Copied from the Manuscript Collections of the Late Rev. Frederick Brown, M.A....
   • Defects seem as necessary to our now happiness as their Opposites.17th century, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica: Or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science; in an Essay of the Vanity of Dogmatizing and Confident Opinion, published 1885, page 207
2. (informal) Fashionable; popular; up to date; current.
   • I think this band's sound is very now.
   • ADAM: I was just thinking, I... (sees the lyre) Hey, brother, do you play? Is it Vulcan? Can I try it? // (Spock gestures his permission and Adam strums a chord) // ADAM: Ho ho, that's now! That's real now! I reach that, brother. I really do. // (He hands the lyre to Spock who plays it briefly)1969 February 21, Charles Napier, quotee, The Way to Eden (Star Trek: The Original Series), Paramount Domestic Television, →OCLC

Adverb

now (not comparable)

1. At the present time.
   • Now I am six.
   • Stop that now, Jimmy!
2. Used to introduce a point, a qualification of what has previously been said, a remonstration or a rebuke.
   • Now, we all want what is best for our children.
   • Now, Jimmy, stop that.
3. Differently from the immediate past; differently from a more remote past or a possible future; differently from all other times.
   • Now I am ready.
   • We all now want the latest toys for our children.
4. At the time reached within a narration.
   • Now he remembered why he had come.
   • He now asked her whether she had made pudding.
5. Used to indicate a context of urgency.
   • Now listen, we must do something about this.
6. (informal) At the present point of a recurring cycle or event.
   • I always used to do my shopping now, to avoid the rush.
7. (obsolete) Very recently; not long ago; up to the present.
   • They that but now, for honour and for plate, / Made the sea blush with blood, resign their hate.c. 1656, Edmund Waller, Of a War with Spain, and Fight for Sea
8. (usually emphasized) Used to address a switching side, or sharp change in attitude from before.
   • Now, you want to protect me. An hour ago, you were mercilessly bullying me!
9. Sometimes; occasionally; used to list a series of often assumed states.
   • His face fit his roles: now smiling, now earnest, now glowering, now raging.
   • And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with their hands loosely clasped before them; now, resting a knee or a shoulder; now, easing a belt or a pouch; now, opening the door to spit stiffly over their high stocks, out into the yard.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter V, in Great Expectations […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 63

Conjunction

now

1. (often) Since, because, in light of the fact.
   • Now all the children have grown up and left, the house is very quiet.
   • Now that my sister has gotten rid of their cat, we can go to her house this coming Thanksgiving.

Interjection

1. Indicates a signal to begin.
   • Now! Fire all we've got while the enemy is in reach!

Noun (1)

now (usually uncountable, plural nows)

1. (usually) The present time.
   • Now is the right time.
   • There is no better time than now.
2. (often, usually) The state of not paying attention to the future or the past.
   • She is living in the now.

   Synonyms:

   here and now, as-is, present

3. (countable, usually) A particular instant in time, as perceived at that instant.
   • Forever is composed of Nows— / 'T is not a different time, / Except for infiniteness / And latitude of home.a. 1887 (date written), Emily Dickinson, “Forever is composed of Nows”, in Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson, editors, Further Poems of Emily Dickinson, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown...
   • Time is not thrust together and summed up out of nows, but the reverse: with reference to the now we can articulate the stretching out of time always only in specific ways.1982, Albert Hofstadter, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, translation of original by Martin Heidegger, page 249

Proper noun capitalized: NOW

NOW

1. (US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of National Organization for Women, an American feminist organization.

Noun (2) capitalized: NOW

NOW (plural NOWs)

1. (US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of negotiable order of withdrawal (“an instrument similar to a check”).