then
/ðɛn/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 6.07 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
adv
In addition; also; besides.
adv
adj
Being so at that time.
Example Sentences
- "He was happy then."
- "And the Canaanite was then in the land."
- "In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts,[…], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the Celebrity."
- "The country was shaken by the then-recent assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, which happened against the background of profound racial tensions, stark economic inequality and growing opposition to the Vietnam War."
- "He fixed it, then left."
- "Turn left, then right, then right again, then keep going until you reach the service station."
Etymology
From Middle English then(ne), than(ne), from Old English þonne, þanne, þænne (“then, at that time”), from Proto-West Germanic *þan, from Proto-Germanic *þan (“at that (time), then”), from earlier *þam, from Proto-Indo-European *tóm, accusative masculine of *só (“demonstrative pronoun, that”). Cognate with Dutch dan (“then”), German dann (“then”), Swedish då (“then”), Icelandic þá (“then”). Doublet of than.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ðɛn/
- British English: /ðɛn/