Aside

How to spell aside

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce aside

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aside mean?

1. adverbTo or on one side; out of the way, or kept in reserve.
2. nounA remark spoken so that only some people (or the audience) are meant to hear it.

Aside in a sentence

• adverb

  She stepped aside to let the trolley pass through the doorway.

• noun

  The actor delivered a sly aside directly to the audience.

• adverb

  He set a little money aside each month for the holiday.

• noun

  She muttered a sarcastic aside that the others pretended not to hear.

Where does aside come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Aside formed in Middle English around the 1200s from the phrase 'on side', where the older preposition 'a-' simply meant 'on' or 'to', the same little prefix you see in 'ashore', 'aboard' and 'asleep'. The second element, 'side', comes from the Old English 'side', meaning the flank or long edge of something, a thoroughly native Germanic word. So the literal sense was 'to or on one side', the idea of moving something out of the central path. From this spatial meaning the figurative uses grew: setting money aside, putting worries aside, and stepping aside from a role. The theatrical noun, a remark an actor speaks toward the audience but supposedly out of the other characters' hearing, appeared in the 1700s and keeps the same core notion of words turned to the side, away from the main exchange.

How the word is built

• a- (on, to, from Old English an/on)
• side (flank, edge)