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Contemporary vs Temporal - What's the difference?

contemporary | temporal |

As adjectives the difference between contemporary and temporal

is that contemporary is from the same time period, coexistent in time while temporal is of or relating to time.

As nouns the difference between contemporary and temporal

is that contemporary is someone or something living at the same time, or of roughly the same age as another while temporal is anything temporal or secular; a temporality.

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.
  • temporal

    English

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) temporal, from (etyl) temporal, from (etyl) temporalis, from .

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Of or relating to time.
  • Of limited time; not perpetual.
  • * Bible, 2 Corinthians iv. 18
  • The things which are seen are temporal , but the things which are not seen are eternal.
  • Of or relating to the material world, as opposed to (spiritual).
  • * 2011 , Thomas Penn, Winter King , Penguin 2012, p. 166:
  • Not long before, he had ruefully acknowledged in a letter to his pious mother that most of his appointments to the bench of bishops had been motivated by distinctly temporal impulses.
  • Lasting a short time only.
  • Civil or political, as distinguished from ecclesiastical.
  • temporal''' power; '''temporal courts
    Derived terms
    * extratemporal * metatemporal * temporality * temporally

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (chiefly, in the plural) Anything temporal or secular; a temporality.
  • (Dryden)
  • * Lowell
  • He assigns supremacy to the pope in spirituals, and to the emperor in temporals .

    Etymology 2

    From .

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • of the temples of the head
  • Derived terms
    * temporal bone * temporal lobe

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (skeleton) Either of the bones on the side of the skull, near the ears.
  • Any of a reptile's scales on the side of the head between the parietal and supralabial scales, and behind the postocular scales.