At this time

Question

Does anyone definitively know the origin of the phrase "at this time" please.

I suspect it is American English, whilst British English equivalent would be "at present".

"At this time" is increasingly being used in England on TV and radio programmes, and by our Police. Is this a recent development in embracing American English, or does it date back to old English?

GPY · Accepted Answer

I'm British and I don't perceive "at this time" to be AmE.

Anonymous · Answer

An Act of Parliament from 1529 uses "The great scarcyte of grayne and vytell at this present tyme." OED

I think you are right at least insofar as that "at present" is little used in American English, which uses "at this time" for that. The citations in the OED do not show "at this time" verbatim in this meaning. I was unable to find "at this time" in this exact meaning in Shakespeare, but I was also unable to find "at present" there. Same goes for the King James Bible. Be that as it may, I would not say that "at this time" is especially idiomatic in nature, and it is a perfectly good way of combining words to get the meaning.

CalifJim · Answer

blue teal 123Does anyone definitively know the origin of the phrase "at this time" please.

It's not the kind of fixed phrase that has a definitive origin. It's literally "at this time", so the origin is really in the origin of the individual words that make it up.

As for American or British, it's used all over the place, as is "at present". I checked on the Google Books Corpus (Ngrams), and in order of frequency of use it goes like this, most frequent first:

1) British: at this time
2) British: at present
3) US: at this time
4) US: at present

So both expressions are used more in BrE than in AmE, and in each region 'at this time' is used more than 'at present'.

Pre-WWII, however, 'at present' was used more than 'at this time' in both varieties of English.

CJ

At this time

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