Temporary means it is only there for now. A temporary bridge while the real one is repaired, a temporary job over the summer, the temporary filling the dentist puts in until next week.
The opposite is permanent, and the pair does heavy work in contracts and job adverts: a temporary contract ends on a stated date, a permanent one does not. The adverb is temporarily — the line is temporarily out of service. Somebody hired for a short spell is a temp, and to temp is to work that way. Three words from the same Latin root get tangled: temporary means short-lived, temporal means to do with time itself, and contemporary means of the same period or of today. Watch the spelling as well — tem-po-ra-ry, with an r before the final y.
1adjectivetemporaryLasting only for a limited time; not permanent.
“The tent was a temporary arrangement that lasted three years.”
synonyms: short-term, provisional
Temporary is Latin temporarius, built on tempus, 'time', and beyond it a Proto-Indo-European root *temh₁-. The same tempus sits inside contemporary, temporal and the musical word tempo. Everything in that family is measured against the clock.
Proto-Indo-European
*temh₁-
Latin
temporarius
English, today
temporary
Built from
Borrowed from Latin temporarius, from tempus (“time”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA