present

1. 1.

   the period of time that is happening now; any continuous stretch of time including the moment of speech

   “that is enough for the present”

   “he lives in the present with no thought of tomorrow”

   Synonymsnowadays

   Broadertime

   Narrowernowhere and nowdatetime beingtodaytonight
2. 2.

   something presented as a gift

   “his tie was a present from his wife”

   Broadergift

   Narrowerbirthday presentChristmas presentwedding present
3. 3.

   a verb tense that expresses actions or states at the time of speaking

   Synonymspresent tense

   Broadertense

   Narrowerhistorical present

1. 1.

   temporal sense; intermediate between past and future; now existing or happening or in consideration

   “the present leader”

   “articles for present use”

   “the present topic”

   “the present system”

   “present observations”

   Antonymsfuturepast

   Similarexistingimmediateinstantlatter-day
2. 2.

   being or existing in a specified place

   “the murderer is present in this room”

   “present at the wedding”

   “present at the creation”

   Antonymsabsent

   Similarattendantever-presentexistingherenaturally occurringomnipresent

Other forms of present

plural

presents·

past tense

presented·

present participle

presenting·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about present

What does present mean?

present means "give an exhibition of to an interested audience". That is the primary sense; the word has 18 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in present?

present has 2 syllables: pres-ent. The stress falls on "pres". In IPA it is /ˈpɹɛzənt/.

What is another word for present?

Close synonyms include show, demo, exhibit, demonstrate, represent. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of present?

The recorded antonyms are future, past, absent.

Is present a common word?

present is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with present?

1 word rhymes with present. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.