Else
adj, adv, conj, name ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Other; in addition to previously mentioned items. not-comparable, postpositional
"The instructor is busy. Can anyone else help me?"
- 1 Otherwise, if not. not-comparable
"How else (= in what other way) can it be done?"
- 1 For otherwise; or else.
"Then the Wronskian of f and g must be nonzero, else they could not be linearly independent."
- 1 A surname.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"I can only wonder if this is the same for everyone else."
Etymology
From Middle English ells, elles, from Old English elles (“other, otherwise, different”), from Proto-West Germanic *alljas, from Proto-Germanic *aljas (“of another, of something else”), genitive of *aljaz (“other”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂élyos, from *h₂el- (“other”). Cognate with Old Frisian elles (“other”), Old High German elles, ellies (“other”), Danish eller (“or”), Danish ellers (“otherwise”), Swedish eljes, eljest (“or else, otherwise”), Norwegian elles (“else, otherwise”), Gothic 𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌹𐍃 (aljis, “other”), Latin alius (“other, another”), Ancient Greek ἄλλος (állos), Arcadocypriot αἶλος (aîlos), modern Greek αλλιώς (alliós, “otherwise, else”), Proto-Slavic *olni.
* As an English surname, spelling variant of Ell. * As a north German surname, of Low German origin, from Proto-West Germanic *aliʀu (“alder”), comparable to Dutch els.
Related phrases
More for "else"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.