Question e-mailed by Edsel Ocson (December 2, 2014):
Newscasters often say: “We’ll bring you all these stories momentarily.” Then another says: “We’ll bring you all these stories in a moment.”
Is the first sentence or statement correct?
My reply to Edsel Ocson:
Both of the following sentences that you presented are grammatically and semantically correct:
(1) “We’ll bring you all these stories momentarily.”
(2) “We’ll bring you all these stories in a moment.”
They are, in fact, synonymous. The adverb “momentarily” in Sentence 1 has precisely the same sense as the adverbial phrase “in a moment.”
The adverb “momentarily” has two distinct senses, the first being “for a moment,” as in “We were momentarily silenced by the surprise announcement”; and the second, “at any moment” or “in a moment,” as in the second sentence you presented, “We’ll bring you all these stories momentarily.”
