Definition of "now"

Defects seem as necessary to our now happiness as their Opposites.

17th century, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica: Or, Confest Ignorance, the Way to Science; in an Essay of the Vanity of Dogmatizing and Confident Opinion‎, published 1885, page 207

The history of the infant colonies teaches us that the country comprised within the limits of the now United States of America was originally patented in the reign of James I., of England, into two portions: that in less than eighty years from that period, the same was again divided into twelve distinct provinces; a thirteenth being after added in the creation of the State of Georgia.

1855, Conrad Swackhamer, The United States democratic review, volume 5

Where in assumpsit for money lent, the defendant pleaded that in an action in which the now defendant was plaintiff, and the now plaintiff was defendant, […] .

1908, The English reports

Radio 4's continuity announcer said at the end of the show: "As many of you will have noticed, that edition of The Now Show wasn't very now. It was actually last week's programme. Our apologies for that."

2010 March 17, “Radio 4 apologises for day old shipping forecast”, in The Daily Telegraph‎

Bernard: What does it do?Fran: It's very in.Bernard: You don't know what it is, do you?Fran: It's very now.

2000, “Cooking the Books”, in Black Books, season 1, episode 1 (television production)

Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter III, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

Although the Celebrity was almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it merited.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

They that but now, for honour and for plate, / Made the sea blush with blood, resign their hate.

c. 1656, Edmund Waller, Of a War with Spain, and Fight for Sea

Forever is composed of Nows— / 'T is not a different time, / Except for infiniteness / And latitude of home.

a. 1887 (date written), Emily Dickinson, “Forever is composed of Nows”, in Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson, editors, Further Poems of Emily Dickinson, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, and Company, published 1929, page 25

Time is not thrust together and summed up out of nows, but the reverse: with reference to the now we can articulate the stretching out of time always only in specific ways.

1982, Albert Hofstadter, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, translation of original by Martin Heidegger, page 249