by now

English

Etymology

See by, sense 3: “not later than (the given time); not later than the end of (the given time interval)”.

Prepositional phrase

by now

  1. The hour being what it is; the hour being so advanced; considering that it is so far in time already; now that so much time has elapsed; if not before, now at the latest.
    Coordinate term: by then
    Near-synonyms: already, at this stage, at this point
    My parents ought to've arrived by now. I wonder what's keeping them.
    Totally overwhelmed by now, I started to hand out the fliers willy-nilly.
    By now an angry crowd had collected outside.

Translations

Translations

See also

References

  • “by now”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.