now

English Online Dictionary. What means now‎? What does now mean?

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /naʊ/
• Rhymes: -aʊ

Etymology 1

From Middle English now, nou, nu, from Old English nū, from Proto-West Germanic *nū, from Proto-Germanic *nu, from Proto-Indo-European *nū (“now”).

Alternative forms

• nowe

Adjective

now (not comparable)

1. Present; current.
2. (informal) Fashionable; popular; up to date; current.
3. (archaic, law) At the time the will is written. Used in order to prevent any inheritance from being transferred to a person of a future marriage. Does not indicate the existence of a previous marriage.

See also

• happening

Adverb

now (not comparable)

1. At the present time.

2. (sentential) Used to introduce a point, a qualification of what has previously been said, a remonstration or a rebuke.
3. Differently from the immediate past; differently from a more remote past or a possible future; differently from all other times.
4. At the time reached within a narration.

5. Used to indicate a context of urgency.

6. (informal) At the present point of a recurring cycle or event.

7. (obsolete) As 'but now': Very recently; not long ago; up to the present.
8. Used to address a switching side, or sharp change in attitude from before. (In this usage, now is usually emphasized).

   Now, you want to protect me. An hour ago, you were mercilessly bullying me!

9. Sometimes; occasionally.

   His face fit his roles: now smiling, now earnest, now glowering, now raging.

Derived terms

Translations

Conjunction

now

1. Since, because, in light of the fact; often with that.

Translations

Interjection

now!

1. Indicates a signal to begin.

Translations

Noun

now (usually uncountable, plural nows)

1. (uncountable) The present time.

2. (often with "the") The state of not paying attention to the future or the past.

   Synonyms: here and now; see also Thesaurus:the present

3. (countable, chiefly in phenomenology) A particular instant in time, as perceived at that instant.

Derived terms

• eternal now

Translations

References

• “now”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Etymology 2

See know.

Verb

now

1. Misspelling of know.

Anagrams

• NWO, own, won

Scots

Etymology 1

From Old English hnoll (“top of the head”). Attested in Scots from the 18th century.

Noun

now (plural nows)

1. (archaic, now regional) head

Etymology 2

Uncertain; likely imitative. Described in Scots from the 19th century.

1. to chatter, babble, talk frivolously

Etymology 3

See noo.

Adverb

now (not comparable)

1. Alternative spelling of noo (“now”)

References

Yola

Adverb

now

1. Alternative form of neow

References

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 88