hodiernus

Hodiernus is an archaic Latin adjective meaning "of today" or "present-day." It is used to distinguish events, persons, or periods as belonging to the current day or era rather than the past. The term is formed from hodie, meaning "today," with a suffix that yields adjectives of temporal relation.

In Latin, hodiernus is encountered mainly in late antique and Renaissance texts, where authors sought to emphasize immediacy or contemporaneity in chronologies, chronicles, and legal writings. In phrases such as hodiernus dies or hodierna res, the word signals a present-day context or a focus on the contemporary moment.

In modern scholarship, hodiernus is of interest primarily to philologists studying Latin grammar and historical temporality. The word remains rare, and when the concept needs to be conveyed in English, writers often opt for terms like present-day, contemporary, or hodiernal, the latter being a very uncommon English adjective borrowed from Latin.

Related terms include hodiernus itself and the English derivative hodiernal, used in specialized or historical contexts to denote events occurring on the present day. Etymologically, hodie is the root in several languages and in technical vocabulary for present-day contexts. See also hodie, hodiernal, presentism, and Latin grammar.