How to use contemporary in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Contemporary means from the same time period, coexistent in time; contemporaneous. Example: “Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare.”

Examples of contemporary by meaning

adjectiveModern, of the present age (shorthand for ‘contemporary with the present’).

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.2012 January, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012...

nounSomeone or something belonging to the same time period (as someone or something else).

Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare.
The early mammals inherited the earth by surviving their saurian contemporaries.
Thinking more metaphorically, his American contemporary James Russell Lowell wrote: “It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of intelligence.” Had he lived to the year 2021, he might have changed his mind.2021 January 13, Steven Poole, “'Insurrection': how an old word for an old thing was Trumped”, in The Guardian, archived from the original...

More sentences with contemporary

Though Islam allows polygamy, it is frowned upon in many contemporary Muslim societies.From the entry polygamy
Critics of contemporary culture generally posit a steep decline in cultural literacy.From the entry cultural literacy
"SOS" has, in contemporary usage, been reanalyzed to stand for "save our souls".From the entry reanalyze
The Romans' martiality was much greater than that of its contemporaries.From the entry martiality
They are just not in tune with the contemporary market.From the entry in tune
A good deal of contemporary theater strikes me as chazzerai.From the entry chazzerai
But as far as contemporary phonology is concerned, linking R is all one thing.2024, Dr. Geoff Lindsey, 10:24 from the start, in English actors get this WRONG when they do American accents. From the entry grapholatry
“"Not a human, not yet a vampire," to paraphrase one of your contemporary musical troubadours.”2023 August 17, Jeremy Levick & Rajat Suresh, “Hybrid Creatures” (0:18 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 5, episode 7…. From the entry troubadour
Some aspects of contemporary progressivism look less like actual progress and more like a step in reverse.2023 November 16, Pamela Paul, “Progressives Aren’t Liberal”, in The New York Times. From the entry progressivism
This remake injects some contemporary misfortune (humans despoil the water, we're told).2023 May 24, Wesley Morris, “'The Little Mermaid' Review: Disney's Renovations Are Only Skin Deep”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry screensavery
The backbone of our research is an extensive corpus of contemporary spoken Esperanto.2022, Sabine Fiedler, Cyril Robert Brosch, “Methods and data” (chapter 5), in Esperanto – Lingua Franca and Language Community, John…. From the entry backbone
But contemporary musical theatre covers so many different musical idioms and requires tremendous vocal dexterity .2022 March 13, David Sisco, Laura Josepher, Performing in Contemporary Musicals, Routledge, →ISBN. From the entry screlt
Barbara O’Quinn was an English fan known for writing for a contemporary British fanzine named Tardis.2022 August 16, D[enis] G[eorge] Valdron, “1985 - THE HUES OF DOOM, (4 minutes, England, Animated, 6th Doctor, 5th Doctor)”, in A Pirate’s…. From the entry doctrix
While contemporary designers give us trends, Quant reset the dial on the way we get dressed.2021 October 28, Karen Dacre, “Miniskirt mayhem! Nine ways Mary Quant revolutionised women’s clothes – and lives”, in The Guardian. From the entry reset the dial
One day, the fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly looked around at his contemporaries, and noticed something curious.2021 June 25, Richard Fisher, “Generational amnesia: The memory loss that harms the planet”, in BBC News. From the entry shifting baseline syndrome
She grew up missing a few elders, too—and contemporaries, for that matter.2020, N[ora] K[eita] Jemisin, “The Interdimensional Art Critic Dr. White”, in The City We Became (Great Cities; 1), London: Orbit, →ISBN. From the entry capisce
Discuss relevant topics and debate relevant issues in contemporary Dominican Republican society.2020, April L. Jones, Rhonda M. Collier, “Implementing and Evaluating Culturally Responsive Teaching for Historical Black Colleges and…. From the entry Dominican Republican
There is some kind of hello-fellow-kids pact among podcasters to use only the cheesiest contemporary jargon.2020 September 28, Alexandra Schwartz, “Can Podcasts Improve Our Well-Being?”, in The New Yorker, New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast Publications…. From the entry hello, fellow kids
In the following sections, I situate my work more explicitly within several contemporary contexts.2018, Nicole Seymour, Bad Environmentalism, page 7. From the entry situate
Popular contemporary cousins include six-word memoirs, twiction, and the blog-born listicle.2018 04, Kim Adrian, The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN. From the entry twiction
He argues that in our own contemporary Western culture, warism is a dominant outlook.2016, Michaeleen Kelly, "Just War Theory as Ideological and Combatant Role Confusion," International Journal of Peace Studies 21(2). From the entry warism
The meshpokhedikeyt was apparently a trade mark of the Bund for contemporaries, too.2016, Dieter Gosewinkel, Dieter Rucht, Gertrud Pickhan, chapter 5, in Transnational Struggles for Recognition: New Perspectives on Civil…. From the entry khavershaft
The assumption that pure, unadmixed ancestral populations have ever existed, and exist now in contemporary populations.2015 June 27, Imp Kerr, “Sci-Fi Crime Drama With A Strong Black Lead”, in The New Inquiry. From the entry unadmixed
Both Avengerland and Curtisland are firmly rooted in an idealized, romanticized version of contemporary Britain.2015, Dominic Sandbrook, The Great British Dream Factory, Penguin, published 2016, page 74. From the entry Curtisland
Members of the book trade evoked another contemporary term, chronique scandaleuse, cautiously.2014, Sarah L. Leonard, Fragile Minds and Vulnerable Souls: The Matter of Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Germany, Philadelphia, Pa.…. From the entry chronique scandaleuse
How contemporary artistic performances elicit cathexis on the part of the audience and promote unifying social rituals.2013, Isher-Paul Sahni, “More than Horseplay”, in Studies in Popular Culture, volume 35, page 76. From the entry cathexis
Like the contemporary urban myth, tales of stomach frogs and "bosom serpents" persisted because they have truthiness.2013, Mary Roach, chapter 8, in Gulp. From the entry truthiness
There aren't a lot of contemporary plays with language this poetic and rich."2013 March 26, Michael Grossberg, “Actor a gem in 'Tiffany's'”, in The Columbus Dispatch. From the entry thesauruslike
Fiction has always had a problem keeping up with contemporary tech culture, though.2013 December 24, August Brown, “Perfect Strangers: Tinder and 21st Century Fiction”, in Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles, Calif.…. From the entry hook-upper
Lean to the point of emaciation, Munro was also a paragon of contemporary fashion.2012, Frank Lean, Boiling Point. From the entry avoirdupois
This is also how the role of technoselves in contemporary life becomes intelligible.2012, Rocci Luppicini, editor, Handbook of Research on Technoself: Identity in a Technological Society. From the entry technoself
Many contemporary industrial societies are characterized by the condition some writers call "affluenza".2010, Andrew Brennan, Y. S. Lo, “Beyond Individual Responsibility: Governance and the Affluenzic Society”, in Understanding Environmental…. From the entry affluenza
There is today what might be called a “Trinitarian crisis” in contemporary theology.2010, Larry D. Hart, Truth Aflame, Zondervan, →ISBN, page 132. From the entry holy trinity
There is no surviving contemporary account of the war between the Palmyrenes and the Emperor Aurelian.2008, Pat Southern, Empress Zenobia: Palmyra's Rebel Queen, Continuum Books, page 131. From the entry Palmyrene
The resulting set of images show a mixture of contemporary and historical GRT lifestyles and language.2008 June, “Poster Competition Results”, in Gypsy, Roma, Traveller History Month Magazine, The Gypsy Media Company, archived from the…. From the entry grt
The agonic–hedonic distinction has two limitations which have led to its disuse in contemporary primatology.2007, Warren D. TenHouten, “The Sociorelational Approach to the Emotions: Four Elementary Forms of Sociality”, in A General Theory of…. From the entry agonic

Meaning of contemporary

adjective From the same time period, coexistent in time; contemporaneous.
adjective Modern, of the present age (shorthand for ‘contemporary with the present’).
noun Someone or something belonging to the same time period (as someone or something else).

Full definition of contemporary

Questions about contemporary in a sentence

How do you use contemporary in a sentence?: Contemporary is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare.”
What is a short sentence with contemporary?: “Cervantes was a contemporary of Shakespeare.”
What does contemporary mean?: Contemporary means from the same time period, coexistent in time; contemporaneous.

Adapted from Wiktionary: contemporary (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use contemporary in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/contemporary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.