These words refer to what is new or to what exists now. Modern suggests a historical division of time including the present and what has gone immediately before it; this can be a comparatively long or short period.

• The discovery of America in 1492 demarcates medieval from modern history; Several modern schools of painting were unheard of in the 1920s.

Modern may also distinguish something in vogue from something old-fashioned, or a present period from an older one: modern furniture that looked strange against the room’s Edwardian architecture. Like modern , contemporary may be used to refer to a historical division that includes the present, but it usually suggests a much narrower slice of time than modern : the trends in modern times that have culminated in certain contemporary attitudes. On the other hand, contemporary but is most often used simply as classification rather than in implying a positive or negative judgement about value: arguing that present-day taste was evenly split between modern and traditional styles.

Recent and current stress what exists now; recent emphasizes factual classification of the immediately preceding past, a slice of time narrower than contemporary but more extended than present-day. Current , by contrast, emphasizes only those recent things that are still viable at this moment.

• Of these three recent magazines, only one is still current .

Timely , like current , refers to things of the moment, but differs from current in its ability to refer to things of another time that have again become fashionable or pertinent: Machiavelli’s advice on the uses of power is still timely in the struggle for company leadership.