at present
- idiom
- /æt ˈprɛzənt/
- Israel does not at present have the military forces for an all out assault on Rafa.
- only at present
- at present, most
- still at present
I certainly can't speak for him, but at present I don't take rapamycin.
- I certainly can't speak for him, but at present I don't take rapamycin.
- The fame of Cicero flourishes at present, but that of Aristotle is utterly decayed.
- There is a a double standard in our ethics at present.
- It's really it's, it's not going to perform well at present.
- China could in theory do this, but it doesn't seem very likely at present.
- And AI at present is mostly digesting the products of human culture.
- The title of our panel is economic citizenship, which is obviously a timely issue at present.
- So at present, mathematicians don't really know how small the counterexamples can be.
- This value for Sudan is extremely high, given that most causes of a maternal death are preventable at present.
- So we have diverse fibre going out to two of our core points at present, one in East London, in Docklands and one in West London.
- We'll talk in just a moment about why the idea of a looming EM style sterling crisis doesn't make an awful lot of sense at present.
- Do you have a sense of why that is not, at least at present, serving as a more active deterrent to posting this kind of content?
- And I did some research and at present there are books on Stoicism written for general audiences coming out at the rate of more than one per day.
Examples
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At present, the human race is facing an existential crisis.
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This is a plaster cast of him, at present on display at the Crostic Art Gallery.
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"I do not need a camera at present, thank you."
Fiction book (2002) -
But there is no AI at present that can do everything which you all can do.
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Numerous reports indicate that students, at present, have weak geographic knowledge.
Academic text (1990) -
"That'll take about two years, the way things are going at present," Jack said.
Fiction book (1993) -
I'm rather busy just at present," he said, eyeing his empty shop.
Fiction book (2002) -
I think it's also important to point to the fact that technology, at least at present, doesn't and isn't going to solve all of this.
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So we have diverse fibre going out to two of our core points at present, one in East London, in Docklands and one in West London.
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At present, the human race is facing an existential crisis.
Synonyms
At this exact moment or right away
At the present time
At the present time rather than in the past
The time and place you are in now
At this very moment without delay
The present time, especially compared with the past
At the present time
At the present time in general
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
at + present
The meaning 'at the present moment' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'at' (a locative/time preposition) with 'present' (the current time). This preposition + time-noun composition is a common, cross-linguistic pattern (e.g. French 'à présent', Spanish 'en el presente') and will be understandable to a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
The phrase at present uses a simple picture: at points to a place and present means 'being here now', so it is like pointing to the current moment. That's why at present means 'now'.