Meanings
- alternativeAlternative form of in the meantime.
In the mean time I lay fairly expoſed to the examination of his eyes, and hands, quiet and unreſiſting, […]
Fanny Hill
1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the First]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume I, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, page 1051 more example
But in the mean time Robin Hood and his band lived quietly in Sherwood Forest, without showing their faces abroad, for Robin knew that it would not be wise for him to be seen in the neighborhood of Nottingham, those in authority being very wroth with him.
1883, Howard Pyle, “Robin Hood Turns Butcher”, in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood […], New York, N.Y.: […] Charles Scribner’s Sons […], →OCLC, part second, page 47
Cite this entry
in the mean time. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/in%20the%20mean%20time
“in the mean time.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/in%20the%20mean%20time. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “in the mean time,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/in%20the%20mean%20time.
Source: in the mean time on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.