meantime
n. uncountablen. the time between two events. You use it when you are waiting for something to happen and want to talk about what you do during that wait.
n. the intervening period between two events or points in time. Almost exclusively used within the adverbial phrases 'in the meantime' or 'for the meantime' to indicate duration or temporary status.
The movie starts at eight; in the meantime, let's get dinner.
The new office won't be ready until next month, so in the meantime, we are all working from home.
While the board of directors debated the long-term merger strategy, the department heads were instructed to maintain current production levels in the meantime to avoid market share loss.
From Middle English menetime, equivalent to mean + time. Adverb is by ellipsis from in the meantime.
Primarily functions as part of the prepositional phrase 'in the meantime'. It acts as a temporal bridge between a completed action and a future one.
In meantime, I will wait.In the meantime, I will wait.The noun requires the definite article 'the' when used in the common idiomatic phrase 'in the meantime'.