ówczesnymi

Ówczesny is a Polish adjective meaning contemporary with respect to a given time: it describes people, events, or conditions that existed at that particular moment in the past. In historical writing, journalism, and literature, ówczesny helps frame descriptions as they were at the reference time, distinguishing them from present conditions.

The form ówczesnymi appears as the instrumental plural form of the adjective. It is used with nouns in the instrumental case, for example with prepositions such as z or przy, as in z ówczesnymi problemami or przy ówczesnymi realiami. The base adjective declines in the usual way: masculine singular nominative ówczesny, feminine ówczesna, neuter ówczesne; plural nominative masculine personal ówczesni, and feminine/neuter plural ówczesne. Instrumental plural, as noted, is ówczesnymi.

Etymologically, ówczesny comes from the adverbial root ówczasu (“at that time”) plus the adjectival suffix -ny, forming a term that signals temporal reference to a previous period. It is distinct from współczesny, which more often signals the broader sense of “contemporary” in the sense of present-day or current, and from wówczasowy or other rarer forms that may appear in older texts.

Typical usages include phrases like ówczesna sytuacja polityczna, ówczesne realia gospodarcze, or z ówczesnymi problemami. In sum, ówczesnymi functions as the instrumental plural form of ówczesny, used to describe what existed or occurred at a specific past time.