Else

How to spell else

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce else

What does else mean?

1. adverbIn addition to, instead of, or different from something or someone already mentioned.

Else in a sentence

• Finish the report tonight, or else the deadline will slip.

• There was nothing else left in the fridge for dinner.

Where does else come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Else comes straight from the Old English word elles, which meant 'otherwise', 'differently' or 'in another way'. That form was originally a genitive built on a root meaning 'other', and it descends from the same ancient Indo-European source that gave Latin alius and Greek allos, both meaning 'other' or 'another'. You can still see that family resemblance in borrowed English words like 'alias' and 'alien', which carry the sense of something other or different. The word has stayed remarkably stable since Anglo-Saxon times, drifting only slightly to its modern duties of marking alternatives, as in 'someone else' or 'or else'. Because it has always been short and entirely native, its spelling holds no real trap beyond the soft final -se rather than a -ce ending.

How the word is built

• else (a single, unanalysable word from Old English elles 'otherwise'; no separable prefix or suffix)