'Now' has barely changed in 5,000 years — Latin 'nunc,' Greek 'nyn,' Sanskrit 'nu.' One of PIE's survivors.
At the present time or moment; immediately; under the present circumstances. Also used as a discourse marker to introduce a new topic or command.
From Old English 'nu' (now, at this moment, at present), from Proto-Germanic *nu (now), from PIE *nu (now, at this moment). Among all temporal words in the Indo-European family, 'now' is the most ancient and most resistant to change: it has barely altered in form or meaning across five thousand years of attested linguistic history. The PIE root *nu is a pure temporal deictic — a word whose function is to point to the moment of utterance — and its cognates appear with near-identical form in virtually every branch of the family: Sanskrit 'nu' or 'nu' (now, soon), Avestan 'nu,' Greek 'nun,' Latin 'nunc' (nu + demonstrative particle *-ce, giving 'now-this'), Gothic 'nu,' Old Norse 'nu,' Old High
'Now' is one of the most etymologically stable words in any Indo-European language. English 'now,' Latin 'nunc,' Greek 'nyn,' Sanskrit 'nu,' and Lithuanian 'nu' all descend from PIE *nu with virtually no change in form or meaning across five millennia — a rare case of near-perfect preservation.