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Now and then   /naʊ ənd ðɛn/   Listen
adverb
Now  adv.  
1.
At the present time; at this moment; at the time of speaking; instantly; as, I will write now. "I have a patient now living, at an advanced age, who discharged blood from his lungs thirty years ago."
2.
Very lately; not long ago. "They that but now, for honor and for plate, Made the sea blush with blood, resign their hate."
3.
At a time contemporaneous with something spoken of or contemplated; at a particular time referred to. "The ship was now in the midst of the sea."
4.
In present circumstances; things being as they are; hence, used as a connective particle, to introduce an inference or an explanation. "How shall any man distinguish now betwixt a parasite and a man of honor?" "Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is?" "Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now, Barabbas was a robber." "The other great and undoing mischief which befalls men is, by their being misrepresented. Now, by calling evil good, a man is misrepresented to others in the way of slander."
Now and again, now and then; occasionally.
Now and now, again and again; repeatedly. (Obs.)
Now and then, at one time and another; indefinitely; occasionally; not often; at intervals. "A mead here, there a heath, and now and then a wood."
Now now, at this very instant; precisely now. (Obs.) "Why, even now now, at holding up of this finger, and before the turning down of this."
Now... now, alternately; at one time... at another time. "Now high, now low, now master up, now miss."


Then  adv.  
1.
At that time (referring to a time specified, either past or future). "And the Canaanite was then in the land." "Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
2.
Soon afterward, or immediately; next; afterward. "First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."
3.
At another time; later; again. "One while the master is not aware of what is done, and then in other cases it may fall out to be own act."
By then.
(a)
By that time.
(b)
By the time that. (Obs.) "But that opinion, I trust, by then this following argument hath been well read, will be left for one of the mysteries of an indulgent Antichrist."
Now and then. See under Now, adv.
Till then, until that time; until the time mentioned. Note: Then is often used elliptically, like an adjective, for then existing; as, the then administration.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Now and then" Quotes from Famous Books



... Arabs mounted on wild asses rode out and threw spears at them. The master of the galley took a painted bow in his hand and shot one of them in the throat. He fell heavily into the surf, and his companions galloped away. A woman wrapped in a yellow veil followed slowly on a camel, looking back now and then ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... to the prattle of the purling rills, Were heard the lowing herds along the vale, And flocks loud-bleating from the distant hills, And vacant shepherds piping in the dale; And now and then sweet Philomel would wail, Or stock doves 'plain amid the forest deep, That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale; And still a coil the grasshopper did keep: Yet all these sounds, yblent, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of the most tremendous extant tragedies of characters in combat, are Shakspere's, and only Shakspere's. This instance, indeed, enables us exactly to indicate what the English owed to Italy and what was essentially their own. From that Southern land of Circe about which they dreamed, and which now and then they visited, came to their imaginations a spirit-stirring breath of inspiration. It was to them the country of marvels, of mysterious crimes, of luxurious gardens and splendid skies, where love was more passionate and life more picturesque, and hate ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the deified Augustus partook of his meats and drinks with particular joy. Now and then his lifted hand remained suspended in the air, and a dull glimmer replaced the bright sheen of his fiery eye. It was the cold wave of Horror that surged at his feet. Defeated, but not undone, ever awaiting its hour, that Horror stood at ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... foolish. The flat earth, floating tremulously on the sea; the sun moving always over the flat, giving day when near enough, and night when too far off; the self-luminous moon, with a semi-transparent invisible moon, created to give her an eclipse now and then; the new law of perspective, by which the vanishing of the hull before the masts, usually thought to prove the earth globular, really proves it flat;—all these and other things are well fitted to form exercises for a person who is learning the elements of astronomy. The manner ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan


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