Asynchronous vs. synchronous

What absolutely confuses me is that synchronous means "at the same time", yet when used in the sense above, it means sequential, and asynchronous means "not at the same time"...?? Can somebody explain this conflict?

Oddly enough "Synchronously" means using the same clock so when two instructions are synchronous they use the same clock and must happen one after the other. "Asynchronous" means not using the same clock so the instructions are not concerned with being in step with each other. That's why it looks backwards, *the term is not referring to the instructions relationship to each other. It's referring to each instructions relationship to the clock. *

Hope that helps.

From stackoverflow.com here