Onetime

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Belonging to a previous time or no longer current
2. Having existed or been used in the past but not now
3. Relating to something that occurred previously and is not ongoing

Etymology: "Onetime" is a simple compound: "one" plus "time," with the sense of "one time" meaning a single occasion in the past. Its adjective use, describing someone who was something at an earlier period, grew out of that phrase. So a "onetime champion" is a former champion, someone who held the title once but no longer does. The construction follows the same pattern as "one-time" written with a hyphen, and older dictionaries often treat the two spellings as variants. The unhyphenated form is the more common modern spelling.

Synonyms: former, previous, past, one-off, ex