Another

How to spell another

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce another

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does another mean?

1. determinerOne more of the same kind, or a different one.

Another in a sentence

• She ordered another coffee before the meeting started.

• We will need to find another supplier for the parts.

Where does another come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word formed inside English itself rather than being borrowed. In Old and Middle English it was written as two separate words, 'an other', literally meaning 'one other' or 'a different one'; 'an' was simply the indefinite article 'a', and 'other' carried its ancient sense of 'the second' or 'the remaining one'. Over time the article and the noun were spoken together so often that they fused into a single word, a process called univerbation, which is why we now write 'another' with no space. The 'other' element traces back to the Old English 'oththar' and shares its deep Germanic ancestry with German 'ander' and Dutch 'ander'. The buried history explains the spelling trap: the single 'n' belongs to the old article 'an', so writers must resist doubling it or inserting a space.

How the word is built

• an- (variant of 'a', one)
• other (different one)