Contemporary means existing or happening in the present time, or belonging to the same time period as something else. When you read about contemporary music, that usually means music being created and performed today, not classical symphonies from 200 years ago. A contemporary artist is someone making art now, using current ideas and techniques.

The word can also describe people or things that existed at the same time in history. Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I were contemporaries because they lived during the same era in England. If you're reading about the American Revolution, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were contemporaries, even though they had different roles and lived in different places.

Sometimes contemporary gets confused with modern, but they're slightly different. Modern often refers to a specific style or period (like modern art or modern architecture), while contemporary simply means “of this time” or “of the same time.” What's contemporary today will eventually become historical, just as Victorian writers were contemporary to people in the 1800s but are historical to us now.

The noun form is contemporary, meaning a person who lived at the same time as someone else: “Lincoln and Darwin were contemporaries, both born in 1809.”