Someday

How to spell someday

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce someday

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does someday mean?

1. adverbAt an unspecified time in the future.

Someday in a sentence

• She hopes to visit Japan someday once she has saved enough money.

• He keeps telling himself he will write that novel someday.

Where does someday come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound of two ancient native English elements, 'some' and 'day', both inherited from Old English. 'Some' descends from the Old English 'sum', meaning 'a certain one' or 'an unspecified quantity', while 'day' comes from the Old English 'dæg', meaning the period of light or a span of twenty-four hours. The two words long existed side by side as the phrase 'some day', meaning 'on an unspecified future day', and only fused into the single solid form 'someday' in relatively modern usage, mainly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The one-word spelling now signals the vague adverbial sense of 'at some future time', while the open form 'some day' can still point to a particular but unnamed day. That closeness is precisely the spelling trap: writers hesitate over whether to join the words or keep them apart.

How the word is built

• some (an unspecified amount/one)
• day (a unit of time)