Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Belonging to the present time.
  • adjective Being in progress now.
  • adjective Passing from one to another; circulating.
  • adjective Prevalent, especially at the present time: synonym: prevailing.
  • adjective Running; flowing.
  • noun A steady, smooth onward flow or movement: synonym: flow.
  • noun The part of a body of liquid or gas that has a continuous onward movement.
  • noun A general tendency, movement, or course. synonym: tendency.
  • noun A flow of electric charge.
  • noun The amount of electric charge flowing past a specified circuit point per unit time.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make current or common; establish in common estimation; render acceptable.
  • noun An obsolete spelling of currant.
  • Running; moving; flowing; passing.
  • Hence Passing from one to another; especially, widely circulated; publicly known, believed, or reported; common; general; prevalent; as, the current ideas of the day.
  • Passing from hand to hand; circulating: as, current coin.
  • Established by common estimation or consent; generally received: as, the current value of coin.
  • Entitled to credit or recognition; fitted for general acceptance or circulation; authentic; genuine.
  • Now passing; present in its course: as, the current month or year.
  • noun A flowing; a flow; a stream; a passing by a continuous flux: used of fluids, as water, air, etc., or of supposed fluids, as electricity.
  • noun Specifically, a portion of a large body of water or of air moving in a certain direction: as, ocean-currents.
  • noun Course in general; progressive movement or passage; connected series: as, the current of time.
  • noun General or main course; general tendency: as, the current of opinion.
  • noun The amount of depression given to a roof to cause the water which falls upon it to flow in a given direction.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Archaic Running or moving rapidly.
  • adjective Now passing, as time.
  • adjective Passing from person to person, or from hand to hand; circulating through the community; generally received; common.
  • adjective Commonly estimated or acknowledged.
  • adjective Fitted for general acceptance or circulation; authentic; passable.
  • adjective See under Account.
  • adjective lawful money.
  • noun A flowing or passing; onward motion. Hence: A body of fluid moving continuously in a certain direction; a stream; esp., the swiftest part of it; ; that which resembles a stream in motion.
  • noun General course; ordinary procedure; progressive and connected movement
  • noun an instrument for measuring the velocity, force, etc., of currents.
  • noun a mill driven by a current wheel.
  • noun a wheel dipping into the water and driven by the current of a stream or by the ebb and flow of the tide.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The part of a fluid that moves continuously in a certain direction.
  • noun electricity The time rate of flow of electric charge.
  • noun A tendency or a course of events.
  • adjective Existing or occurring at the moment.
  • adjective Generally accepted, used, practiced, or prevalent at the moment.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a flow of electricity through a conductor
  • noun a steady flow of a fluid (usually from natural causes)
  • adjective occurring in or belonging to the present time
  • noun dominant course (suggestive of running water) of successive events or ideas

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English curraunt, from Old French corant, present participle of courre, to run, from Latin currere; see kers- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English curraunt, from Old French curant (French: courant), present participle of courre ("to run"), from Latin currere, present active infinitive of currō ("I run").

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Examples

  • An electric current produces a magnet, and _a magnet also may be made to produce an electric current_.

    Steam, Steel and Electricity James W. Steele

  • Now when a current acts by induction upon conducting matter lateral to it, it probably acts upon the electricity in that conducting matter whether it be in the form of a _current_ or

    Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 Michael Faraday 1829

  • # Alternatively, we could just use makeobj in the commands below ... current = ` pwd ` if [ "$srcFolder" = "$current"]; then cb fi

    KDE TechBase - Recent changes [en] Fulldecent 2010

  • * @param string $current is the current value of the option in use (used to set the selected option in the list) * @param string $options should be an array of the options to be generated function generate_option_list ($current, $options) $list = ""; foreach ($options as $curopt) $sel = ""; if ($current = = $curopt) $sel = "selected = \" selected\ "";

    phpBB.com 2010

  • # substitute build dir with src dir dest = ` pwd | sed - e s, $KDE_BUILD, $KDE_SRC, ` current = ` pwd ` if [ "$dest" = "$current"]; then cd "$KDE_SRC" else cd "$dest" fi fi

    KDE TechBase - Recent changes [en] Fulldecent 2010

  • {remove x from list} return {break} end else {x not yet found} current: = current↑. next end end end; {DELETE} Fig. 4.12.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • x then goto add; {break} current: = current↑. next end; add: {current is now the cell after which x is to be inserted} new (newcell); newcell↑. element: = x; newcell↑. next: = current↑. next; current↑. next: = newcell end; {INSERT} Fig. 4.6.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • We needed to be inventive about wording in the communique in consideration for a country that did not want to use the term 'current account balance'...

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

  • We needed to be inventive about wording in the communique in consideration for a country that did not want to use the term 'current account balance'...

    Reuters: Top News 2011

  • We needed to be inventive about wording in the communique in consideration for a country that did not want to use the term 'current account balance'...

    Reuters: Top News 2011

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