A.Word.A.Day --elsewhen

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Jan 6, 2025

This week’s theme
Adverbs

This week’s words
elsewhen
towardly

Illustration: Anu Garg × DALL·E

Previous week’s theme
Words coined in comic strips and cartoons

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

To noun is to label someone or something. To adjective is to qualify that noun. To adverb is to qualify that adjective.

John is a plumber. He is a good plumber. He is a very good plumber.

But adverbs can qualify not just adjectives, but also verbs (and even other adverbs).

He fixes faucets fast.^*

Language, like plumbing, relies on the right parts to keep things flowing. Here at Wordsmith.org, our mission is to help you find the perfect parts (of speech) -- and to use them with flair.

This week, we’re turning our wrench to the ever-versatile adverb. They typically end in -ly but not always. We’ll spotlight adverbs -- some classic, some quirky -- that prove there’s always more than one way to fine-tune a sentence.

^*I think I have just come up with a tongue twister. Say this three times rapidly: Phil Fosse fixes faucets fast.

elsewhen

PRONUNCIATION:

(ELS-wen)

MEANING:

adverb: At another time.

ETYMOLOGY:

A combination of else, from Old English elles + when, from Old English hwenne. Earliest documented use: 1418.

USAGE:

“Unlike a black hole -- a region of space-time from which you cannot escape if you get too close -- a wormhole is a region into which you would disappear only to reappear elsewhere or elsewhen.”
Robert Ehrlich; Everybody Knows the Image of T ...; The Washington Post; May 20, 2001.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (6 Jan 1883-1931)

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