Sometime

How to spell sometime

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sometime

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sometime mean?

1. adverbAt some unspecified or indefinite point in time.
2. adjectiveFormer; having held a position or role at some point in the past.

Sometime in a sentence

• adverb

  The final report is due sometime next week.

• adjective

  The sometime chairman of the company now lives abroad.

• adverb

  We should arrange to meet sometime in the spring.

• adjective

  She is a sometime teacher who moved into journalism.

Where does sometime come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, formed from the Old English words sum, meaning 'a certain one' or 'an unspecified amount', and tima, meaning 'a stretch or point of time'. The two elements were written together as an adverb from around the 1200s to mean 'at some unspecified point', and the spelling settled into a single word over the following centuries. By the 1500s it had also developed an adjective use meaning 'former', as in a person who once held a role; this sense survives in formal and literary writing. The spelling trap is purely about word division: the single word sometime (an unspecified moment) sits beside the two-word phrase some time (a quantity of time) and the closely related sometimes (now and then), and confusing them is the usual adult slip. Holding on to the idea that sometime points to one vague occasion, while some time measures a duration, keeps them apart.

How the word is built

• some (an unspecified amount/one)
• time (a point or period)