Then

//ðen// adj, adv, conj, name, noun

adj, adv, conj, name, noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    That time.

    "It will be finished before then."

  2. 2
    that time; that moment wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Being so at that time. not-comparable

    "He had met his then girlfriend when he had just started university. The relationship ended unhappily when the girlfriend complained that he never wanted to go out."

Adjective
  1. 1
    at a specific prior time wordnet
Adverb
  1. 1
    At that time. not-comparable

    "He was happy then."

  2. 2
    Soon afterward. not-comparable

    "He fixed it, then left."

  3. 3
    Next in order of place. not-comparable, sequence

    "There are three green ones, then a blue one."

  4. 4
    In addition; also; besides. not-comparable

    "Another legend says that now and again in the world's history a monarch appears who conquers and rules every nation under the sun. […] Then many of the Siamese believe that the animal is inhabited by the soul of some great man of the past […]"

  5. 5
    In that case. conjunctive, not-comparable

    "If it’s locked, then we’ll need the key."

Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    At the same time; on the other hand. not-comparable, sequence

    "That’s a nice shirt, but then, so is the other one."

  2. 7
    Used to contradict an assertion. UK, dialectal, not-comparable

    "‘She says Indian elephants are tidgy little things.’ ‘They're not then.’ Emma was getting heated. ‘They're –’ ‘Emma!’ said Jenny sharply. The child subsided."

Adverb
  1. 1
    subsequently or soon afterward (often used as sentence connectors) wordnet
  2. 2
    at that time wordnet
  3. 3
    in that case or as a consequence wordnet
Conjunction
  1. 1
    Obsolete spelling of than. alt-of, obsolete

    "[…]his hand, more ſad [i.e., heavy, hard] then lomp of lead,[…]"

  2. 2
    Misspelling of than. alt-of, misspelling
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
and sopastand thenaboveaccordinglyaccordingly

Example

More examples

"After that, I left, but then I realized that I forgot my backpack at their house."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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.

Etymology 2

* As a south German surname, from the personal name Thön, a form of Anthony. * Also as a German surname, a variant of Ten, occupational surname for a mintmaster, from obsolete Middle Low German ten, tene (“blank; disk from which a coin is made”), possibly related to Proto-Germanic *tainaz (“metal rod”), or perhaps otherwise from Proto-Indo-European *ten- (“to stretch”). * Also as a German name, from the noun Tenne (“threshing-floor”). * As a Chinese surname, a Romanization of 鄧 /邓 (dèng) (see Deng) and 田 (tián) (see Tian).

Related phrases

and then everyone clappedand then everyone on the bus clappedand then someback thenbut thenbut then againeven a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and theneven thenevery now and thengo on thenif-thenif-then statement

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.