All words

contemporary

Meaning

Existing or occurring in the same period.

Examples by difficulty

Basic: Simple, everyday vocabulary — the easiest to read.

Her grandmother's music was from a different time, but her own songs felt so contemporary, alive with the same energy and feelings we share today. They were made in the same period.

The old fisherman watched the new trawler glide past. He remembered when his own boat was the newest thing, part of the same period as the town's bustling market. Now, this sleek, modern vessel felt like a different world, though they both shared the same sea.

The old baker grumbled, his bread recipes a generation from the new fast-food joints. He felt like an exhibit from a different time, his whole life lived in a period not quite contemporary with the digital screens and drone deliveries buzzing outside.

My grandpa wore bell-bottoms and listened to disco, totally contemporary music for his time. Meanwhile, I rock my slime green sneakers and listen to hyperpop, which is contemporary for *my* time. It's funny how different styles exist or occur in the same period!

My pet rock, Reginald, is surprisingly contemporary. He and the disco ball I found in the attic both exist in the same period, though Reginald mostly just sits there, judging my questionable sock choices. We're a real throwback, these two.

Normal: Standard, everyday language.

She couldn't believe they were all discussing the same concert. Her friends loved the band, but for her, their music felt so out of place. She preferred the artists who were making music contemporary to her own experiences.

The drone pilot, Sarah, felt a surge of relief as the rescue signal flickered on her screen. Her team's advanced optics, though modern, were just as useful as the older, analog scopes used by the searchers on the ground—both operated in the same, crucial moment, their efforts contemporary to the unfolding emergency.

The dusty journals spoke of a world simultaneously vibrant and terrifying, its inhabitants facing the same anxieties and joys as people today. Their art, their struggles, their hopes—all were remarkably contemporary, a stark reminder that the human heart has not changed, even across centuries.

My grandpa's music taste is totally *not* contemporary with mine. He still listens to disco, while I'm all about that hyperpop. It's like our musical eras are existing at the same time, but are lightyears apart in coolness, which is a hilarious thought.

My grandmother's stories, filled with flappers and Prohibition, feel so incredibly contemporary to my own tales of TikTok dances and artisanal sourdough. It's wild how, even though they lived centuries apart, their daily dramas and silly fads are happening at the same time, practically.

Advanced: Richer vocabulary that stretches an upper-level reader.

Sarah felt a pang of unease as she reread her grandmother's diary entries. The words, so full of life and struggle, chronicled events happening at the exact same time as her own youthful adventures. It was a strange connection, knowing their lives, though separated by decades, were contemporary.

The archaeologist marveled at the perfectly preserved pottery shards. These weren't from some distant, forgotten civilization; they were made by people living at the same time as the intricate bronze tools found nearby, a truly contemporary find, linking two distinct daily existences into a single, shared moment.

The old explorer unfurled a faded map, its brittle parchment whispering of voyages long past. Beside it lay his son's tablet, glowing with the latest navigation data. Both, though separated by centuries of discovery, represented their *contemporary* understanding of the vast, uncharted ocean.

My great-aunt Mildred insists her cat, Mittens, is a contemporary of Shakespeare. She swears Mittens once shared a sardine with the Bard, a claim we find thoroughly perplexing. The notion of their shared existence, contemporaneous events unfolding for both feline and playwright, is quite hilarious.

The intrepid explorer discovered that the supposed ancient manuscript, painstakingly deciphered, detailed the thrilling adventures of a flamboyant pirate captain. Astonishingly, many of the recorded events were contemporary with Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, suggesting a perplexing overlap of swashbuckling and Roman conquest.

Challenging: Rare, high-register vocabulary for serious word lovers.

The old photographs depicted families in styles of dress and hairstyles so utterly alien to my own experience. Yet, their laughter, their shared glances—those were immediately recognizable. Though separated by decades, their lives felt entirely contemporary, echoing the same fundamental human emotions that pulsed through my own existence.

The ancient mariners, charting unknown seas, navigated by constellations unseen by their landlocked contemporaries. They imagined vast empires rising and falling concurrently, their own perilous voyages unfolding in the same period as these distant, hypothetical events.

The excavation of the Shang Dynasty tomb yielded startlingly sophisticated bronze artifacts, entirely contemporary with the rudimentary copper tools found in a contemporaneous European burial site, underscoring the disparate trajectories of technological innovation.

The medieval jester, utterly perplexed by the modern contraption emitting tinny music, considered his own antic performances quite contemporary to the illuminated manuscripts he'd seen. He mused that his anachronistic japes were perfectly occurring in the same period as the monk's diligent, albeit rather monotonous, artistic endeavors.

The Renaissance painters, with their audacious use of chiaroscuro and anatomical verisimilitude, were truly contemporary to the burgeoning field of advanced perfumery in Grasse. Both disciplines, existing or occurring in the same period, evinced a singular predilection for the complex, the nuanced, and the olfactory-bombastic, much to the befuddlement of less discerning palates.

Difficulty

Normal — Everyday words worth reinforcing.

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