HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY
To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.
Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.
THE USAGE PANEL
The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP
The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG
The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.
INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?
Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com
adj. 1. Other; different: Ask somebody else. 2. Additional; more: Would you like anything else? adv. Idiom: In a different or additional time, place, or manner: I always do it this way and I don't know how else it could be done. Where else do you want to go besides Miami? or else 1. Used to indicate an alternative: We need to eat the leftovers or else buy more food. 2. Used to indicate negative consequences that will result if an action is not followed: We need to pay the bill, or else the electricity will be shut off. 3. Used after a command or demand to make a threat: Be there on time, or else! Usage Note: Else is often used redundantly in combination with prepositions such as but, except, and besides. The sentence No one else but Sam saw the accident would thus be better without else. · When a pronoun is followed by else, the possessive form is generally written with the 's following else: That must be someone else's (not someone's else) book. Both who else's and whose else are in use, but not whose else's: Who else's book could it have been? Whose else could it have been? · Sometimes the or is dropped from or else so that else functions as a conjunction, as in George Eliot's "My brother is poor, and I want to look as much like him as I can, else he may feel distant from me." This usage is rare in Standard American English, however, and sounds informal or dialectal. See Usage Note at who. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
