Using “actual” to signify “current”
The New Oxford American Dictionary gives two meanings for actual:
- existing in fact;
- existing now; current
How common is the second of these meanings? Is it something that can be used without fear of being misunderstood (given that the differentiation between the two meanings will often not be clear from context alone)?
My feeling is that it is better to use other words to describe current because (again, this is my feeling), actual is really predominantly used in its first meaning. I am not a native speaker, however, so my gut feeling could be wrong...
EDIT: An example where actual is used to signify current but seems confusing to me:
“The state of the system does not reflect its actual input.”
I can tell you as a (fairly well educated) native speaker, I did not realize actual could be used to mean current until I learned to speak Spanish (in Spanish, the cognate actual means current).
So, while many out there probably will understand you, I can attest that quite a few will only recognize the first definition.
EDIT: (I come from the South East region of the US, FWIW.)
It's common in project management (and management in general) to use actual as the opposite of "Estimate" or "planned". The planned start date was June 1st; the actual start date was June 3rd. The estimated effort for phase 2 was 27 days; the actual effort was 30 days.
I would not use it as a replacement for current (the current time is, the current temperature is, my current bank balance is) unless I had some non-actual value to contrast it to.