Word of the Day:
already
What It Means
Prior to some specified time, either past, present, or future; by this time; previously.
So soon.
An intensifier used to emphasize impatience or express exasperation.
I was surprised that she hadn’t already told me the news.
Already in Context
““Yah, I sign already,” my mother replied.”
Did You Know?
From Middle English alredy (“fully; already”), equivalent to al- (“all, completely”) + ready. Cognate with West Frisian alreeds (“already”), Dutch alreeds (“already”), Afrikaans alreeds (“already”), Middle Low German alreide, alreids ("already"; whence modern German Low German alreeds (“already”)), Danish allerede (“already”), Swedish allaredan (“already”), Norwegian Nynorsk allereie (“already”). More at all, ready. The use as an intensifier in American English is a semantic loan from Yiddish שוין (shoyn), attested from 1903. In Singapore English, the use of already as a marker of action completion and change of state is analogous to Hokkien 了 (liáu), Teochew 了 (liao²) and Mandarin 了 (le). Compare Malay (su)dah and Cantonese 咗 (zo²), 喇 (laa³).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: already (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “already.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/already. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
