meantime

Pluralmeantimes

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The time spent waiting for another event to happen; the period in between.

   Construction won't finish until spring; in the meantime, traffic is being rerouted through downtown.

   The committee adopted temporary rules to govern for the meantime.

   Similarinterim, interval, meanwhile

   Note

   Built in Middle English as menetime, from mean in its sense of 'intermediate' plus time: the stretch in the middle, between one event and the next. Today the noun seldom stands alone. It lives inside two fixed phrases, in the meantime and for the meantime, and the first of these was clipped down to give the one-word adverb.

2. 2
   adverb

   During the time between events; meanwhile.

   The mayor has promised repairs by summer; meantime, residents keep swerving around the potholes.

   Investigators are still reviewing the files. Meantime, the suspect remains free on bail.

   Similarmeanwhile

   Note

   The clipped adverb does the same work as meanwhile and is most at home at the head of a sentence. The comma after it is optional. Boris Sidis writes "Meantime Pope Urban II convoked two councils" in 1919, while a 1951 Railway Magazine piece by J. Pelham Maitland sets it off: "Meantime, the train went on to Brighton." It has no comparative form.

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