"for a time" meaning in English

See for a time in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adverb

Head templates: {{en-adv|-}} for a time (not comparable)
  1. For a relatively short period of time (in the past). Tags: not-comparable
    Sense id: en-for_a_time-en-adv-f7IvMKcd Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "for a time (not comparable)",
      "name": "en-adv"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              37,
              47
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "[1879], George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “[Impressions of Theophrastus Such.] Diseases of Small Authorship.”, in Impressions of Theophrastus Such, Essays and Leaves from a Note-book, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, pages 148–149:",
          "text": "My experience with Vorticella led me for a time into the false supposition that this sort of fungous disfiguration, which makes Self disagreeably larger, was most common to the female sex; […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "For a relatively short period of time (in the past)."
      ],
      "id": "en-for_a_time-en-adv-f7IvMKcd",
      "links": [
        [
          "short",
          "short"
        ],
        [
          "period",
          "period"
        ],
        [
          "time",
          "time"
        ],
        [
          "past",
          "past"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "for a time"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "for a time (not comparable)",
      "name": "en-adv"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English adverbs",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English uncomparable adverbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              37,
              47
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "[1879], George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “[Impressions of Theophrastus Such.] Diseases of Small Authorship.”, in Impressions of Theophrastus Such, Essays and Leaves from a Note-book, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, pages 148–149:",
          "text": "My experience with Vorticella led me for a time into the false supposition that this sort of fungous disfiguration, which makes Self disagreeably larger, was most common to the female sex; […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "For a relatively short period of time (in the past)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "short",
          "short"
        ],
        [
          "period",
          "period"
        ],
        [
          "time",
          "time"
        ],
        [
          "past",
          "past"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "for a time"
}

Download raw JSONL data for for a time meaning in English (1.1kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-01-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (96027d6 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.