interim

Pluralinterims

1. 1
   adjective

   Lasting only for a limited time rather than permanently, until a lasting arrangement takes over.

   The company named an interim leader while it searched for a new chief executive.

   Engineers installed an interim repair to keep the bridge open until full reconstruction.

   Similartemporary, provisional, caretaker

   Oppositepermanent, lasting, definitive

   Note

   Here the stress falls on how long something lasts, not on the change it bridges. The person in an interim post holds it until someone permanent arrives. Before a job title it often drops the article: you are interim manager until he returns. Phil McNulty of BBC Sport wrote in 2012 of Chelsea's turnaround under interim manager Roberto di Matteo. In British use, caretaker fills the same slot, and provisional is the general synonym.

2. 2
   noun

   A period of time that falls between two events or stages, marking the transition from one to the other.

   During the interim between the two administrations, little policy actually changed.

   The permanent contract begins in March, and a temporary arrangement will fill the interim.

   Similarinterval, meantime, interlude, gap

   Note

   The noun stays closest to its Latin source, the "meanwhile" behind the "transitional" adjective. Its usual home is the phrase in the interim, which does the work of meanwhile at the end of a clause: they gave him a rental to drive in the interim. The plural interims exists, but the noun mostly appears in the singular with the. Between-time is a homelier synonym.

3. 3
   adjective

   Serving as a bridge between one stage or arrangement and the next while a change is underway.

   An interim administration governed the territory throughout the move toward independence.

   The two parties signed an interim accord to maintain stability during the negotiations.

   Similartransitional, provisional, temporary, caretaker, intermediate

   Oppositepermanent, final, definitive

   Note

   English took a Latin adverb meaning "meanwhile" and made it an adjective, so the word names whatever stands in the middle of a change. It does not compare: nothing is more interim than something else. It usually comes before a noun, as in schemes "of an interim nature" during the railways' shift from steam to diesel in Trains Illustrated (1960). It can also follow a verb: the government is interim.

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