contemporary is likely to apply to people and what relates to them.
Abraham Lincoln was contemporary with Charles Darwin
contemporaneous is more often applied to events than to people.
contemporaneous accounts of the kidnapping
coeval refers usually to periods, ages, eras, eons.
two stars thought to be coeval
synchronous implies exact correspondence in time and especially in periodic intervals.
synchronous timepieces
simultaneous implies correspondence in a moment of time.
the two shots were simultaneous
coincident is applied to events and may be used in order to avoid implication of causal relationship.
the end of World War II was coincident with a great vintage year
Example Sentences
the contemporaneous publication of the two articles contemporaneous accounts of the battle from officers on both sides
Recent Examples on the WebPhilbin said that Meadows also told him no documents had been destroyed, according to two people with knowledge of the call and a third person with knowledge of Stern’s contemporaneous account of the call.Anchorage Daily News, 16 Sep. 2022 Correctly criticized as being derivative of the contemporaneous work of the Beatles, particularly of Sgt. Liza Lentini, SPIN, 9 Sep. 2022 And in New York, Tommy Hilfiger is bringing his see now, buy now carnival back home for the first time in three years, complete with a contemporaneous metaverse show.New York Times, 7 Sep. 2022 Writing contemporaneous history in China is hard enough. Richard Mcgregor, The Atlantic, 21 Aug. 2022 Our film is telling the story of Diana exclusively through contemporaneous archive from the time and not including commentary from today. Caroline Hallemann, Town & Country, 13 Aug. 2022 In 1956, according to a contemporaneous New York Times report, two men knocked on the door of his Manhattan apartment, then began beating him. Bill Donahue, Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2022 Just as the anniversaries of the two revolutions are proximate, their events were also contemporaneous. Charles Hilu, National Review, 14 July 2022 Despite being set in 2036, the series story arc is contemporaneous in that it is set in a world in the aftermath of a deadly virus. Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 14 July 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from Medieval Latin contemporāneus, from Latin con-con- + tempor-, tempus "time" + -āneus, compound suffix formed from -ānus-an entry 2 + -eus-eous — more at -eous
Note: The Latin word contemporāneus occurs as a noun in the sense "contemporary" in a chapter heading of Aulus Gellius's Noctes Atticae (19.14), though these headings are most likely a post-classical interpolation. The word is otherwise not attested before the early Middle Ages.