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A Google cache can show a web page as it appeared at a point in time in the past:
On a particular google cache page, this caption was found:
link
It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Jul 25, 2014 17:36:27 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime.
what does "in the meantime" mean in this context. According to dictionaries, "meantime" requires two referent points in time. While July 25, 2014 is one, it is not clear what other reference point in time is. Dictionaries seem to suggest that the second reference point could be a point in time in the past or future.
meatie
Posted 2014-07-30T04:04:31.607
Reputation: 7 727
It can't be a future point in time—the sentence has could have, locating the change sometime before now. – snailplane – 2014-07-30T06:34:45.100
@snailplane Would "The current page could have changed *since*" be better? – meatie – 2014-07-30T10:55:54.143
1No, it's better the way it is. – snailplane – 2014-07-30T15:21:40.217
@snailplane But, "since" also includes the period of time up to the present – meatie – 2014-07-31T02:46:11.417
@snailplane The more I reread the original sentence and dictionaries, the more I think the original sentence is poorly written, because the second reference point in time is never indisputably indicated. – meatie – 2014-07-31T13:42:04.103
No, it's fine the way it is. – snailplane – 2014-07-31T15:00:53.403
@snailplane But the second reference point in time could be in the past or present or future. So, it is ambiguous. – meatie – 2014-07-31T15:41:10.493
No, it's not. The second point in time is unambiguously the present. – snailplane – 2014-07-31T16:07:39.150
@snailplane How do you figure out what the second point in time is? – meatie – 2014-07-31T16:10:06.247
You don't, explicitly, but "in the meantime" means "in the intervening span of time since". Because we only referred to one point in time (the past, when the page was indexed), the only thing that makes sense is "between then and now". – stangdon – 2015-02-04T21:03:12.747