Talk:else

I see no elaboration on the possessive "else's" as in "somebody else's", "no one else's", "everyone else's"., etc.. I can find 26 million references to "else's" with Google, but apparently it's improper as it cannot be found in any dictionary. 


 * Of course it's proper: it's just else: + 's:. (In what dictionary can you find any 's:-possessives?) —Ruakh TALK 23:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I think I understand the problem. This originated with spell checkers not finding "else's" valid because by itself it is not. But when followed by some indefinite pronouns such as those mentioned above, it becomes valid but the spell checkers fail to take this into account.


 * Yeah, I don't get it. 's: can be attached to anything — even to, say, to:, as in “the woman I spoke to's son” — so why don't spellcheckers recognize that? *shrug* By the way, please sign your posts using ~&#x7E;. —Ruakh TALK 00:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

This is something that might be worth a Wiktionary article. I've been a bit baffled by this for some time.Djvanveen 00:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Tea room discussion
The word else was recently discussed (see Tea_room/2008/March) but there is an extra meaning missing from the derived terms "any... else". For example:


 * In Anyone else would have spotted the flaw immediately, "anyone else" means "any other person". This is the definition we already give.
 * In Is anyone else coming? this is the interrogative form of someone else, and can refer to one or more people. The same is true in negative sentences: "I didn't see anyone else" is the opposite of "I saw someone else".

The interrogative and negative senses of "anyone else" are distinct from the sense of "all other persons".

The same applies to all of the expressions of the form "any... else", and may or may not also be true for "every... else", "no... else" and "some... else" (I haven't given these any thought).

And yes, of course I could do this myself, but I'm hungry so I'm logging off now. :) &mdash; Paul G 18:05, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I disagree. anyone else: is SOP, and I'm not sure we need an entry for it; but seeing as we have one, our definition is quite correct. "Is anyone else coming?" = "Is any other person coming?" The polysemy that you describe, between a positive sense and a negative-polarity sense, is common to any: and most of its derived terms (including anyone:). But if we want to keep this entry, it might be nice to have a few example sentences showing the various uses. I'll add them now. —Ruakh TALK 18:41, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

interrogative
Is it also interrogative in I always do it this way and I don't know how else it could be done. --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:04, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

whose else
One exception is the possessive for who else, which is occasionally formed as whose else when a noun does not immediately follow: ''Is this book yours? Whose else could it be? No, it's somebody else's.''

Who else’s has predominated over whose else in AmE since the 1960s and in BrE since the 1990s. Current ratios: anyone else’s vs. ✳anyone’s else: 168:1; who else’s vs. whose else : 2:1 --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:46, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Conjunction
Sometimes the or is dropped from or else so that else functions as a conjunction, as in 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." Thisis rare in Standard American English, however, and sounds informal or dialectal. https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=else --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:49, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

redundance
Else is often used redundantly in combination with prepositions such as but, except, and besides. https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=else --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:28, 30 July 2021 (UTC)