English usage and grammar

365 readers

1 users here now

A community to discuss and ask questions about English usage and grammar.

If your post refers to a specific English variant, please indicate it within square brackets (for instance [Canadian]).

Online resources:

Cambridge English Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus
Gilman's Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. This is a great and witty reference about usage, its history, and its controveries

Sibling communities:

!english_esl@lemmy.ml

Rules of conduct:

The usual ones on Lemmy and Mastodon.. In short: be kind or at least respectful, no offensive language, no harassment, no spam.

(Icon: entry "English" in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1933. Banner: page from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".)

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

pglpm@lemmy.ca

pglpm@mander.xyz

pglpm@lemmy.sdf.org

Why no "elsetime" or "elseone" ? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works to c/english@lemmy.ca

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The word "elsewhere" conveniently exist to spare us the chore of saying "somewhere else". Why then do we waste or time saying "someone else" or "some other time"?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] GreyShuck@feddit.uk 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It seems that elsewhen, and a lot of other variations - used to be used, but fell out of fashion. There is some discussion here.

[–] loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 week ago

Cool, thank you! I find it's a shame these words went out of use, like found out about the words "whence", "whither", "thence" and "thither", I feel using them would rid many sentences of superfluous words. But I'm sure if I did, I'd sound pretentious at best or be misunderstood at worst.