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Contemporary vs Original - What's the difference?

contemporary | original |

As nouns the difference between contemporary and original

is that contemporary is someone or something living at the same time, or of roughly the same age as another while original is original.

As an adjective contemporary

is from the same time period, coexistent in time.

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.
  • original

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (label) Relating to the origin or beginning; preceding all others.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1944, author=(w)
  • , title= The Three Corpse Trick, chapter=5 , passage=The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.}}
  • (label) First in a series or copies/versions.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham)
  • , title=(The China Governess) , chapter=1 citation , passage=The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, […].}}
  • (label) Newly created.
  • (label) Fresh, different.
  • (label) Pioneering.
  • (label) Having as its origin.
  • Synonyms

    * (first in series ) initial * autograph * prototype

    Antonyms

    * copy * derivative * reproduction * simile

    Derived terms

    * originally * original sin

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An object or other creation (e.g. narrative work) from which all later copies and variations are derived
  • This manuscript is the original
  • A person with a unique and interesting personality and/or creative talent
  • You’re an original
  • (archaic) An eccentric
  • Synonyms

    * autograph * prototype

    Antonyms

    * copy * remake * reproduction

    Statistics

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