in time-travel contexts: another time; in or to another time
In standard contexts, OED records the sense ‘At some (indefinite or unknown) time; sometime or other’, with one quote from the thirteenth century and then quotes from 1833 onwards with the note ‘Common in 19th cent.’
When he ‘landed,’ it was not in the world of the future he had visited twice before. He did not know where he was—on earth, apparently, somewhere and somewhen.
Mei-Figner’s experiment with nuclear pile 1959. Nobody knows what became of M-F. Embarrassing discovery that power source remained chronostationary; poor M-F stranded somewhen with no return power.
On Thursday you might admire a terrace house with something especially elegant decorating its balcony, and on Friday that same terrace house will exhibit a glassed-in balcony and that balcony will look as though it’s been there for years. And you'll have the uneasy feeling that there’s something wrong somewhere, or somewhen, and then decide that your memory is playing tricks on you.
We went somewhere—somewhen, that is, for we are still here now.
If history says that a battle took place at a given location on a particular day, then I'll be somewhere—or somewhen—far away, sitting in a tavern, drinking beer and pinching the barmaids.
Everything in the world’s always moving, since the world’s part of the sky, and the sky moves all the time. When we talk about miles, what we're really talking about is hours—how long it takes to get from here to there. I think that might be why nobody can see Emmy’s House, since, even though it’s always here, Emmy can make it be here somewhen else.
The setting is a world somewhere, somewhen, some plane of the multiverse, maybe even some post-apocalyptic future of this one.
antedating 1941
R. Heinlein 'Elsewhen'
Last modified 2020-12-21 18:39:29
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.