adverb phrase🎓 English idiom
now and then
occasionally, from time to time
What it means
Now and then describes something that happens occasionally — not often, but not rarely either. It's a soft, casual way to indicate an irregular but recurring frequency, similar to 'every so often'.
Words like “now and then” are exactly the kind of vocabulary our English vocabulary size test measures — find out how many English words you know.
Examples
- We still meet up for coffee now and then.
- Now and then I think about going back to school.
- She checks in with her old colleagues now and then.
- It rains now and then in the desert, but never for long.
Where it comes from
A traditional English binomial dating to at least the 1500s, pairing two adverbs of time to express irregular recurrence — literally 'at this moment and at some other moment'.
Related idioms
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