Basic+ Word of the Day: else

else (adjective, adverb)

"Do it, or else!"

We use else to talk about something different, not the thing that we talked about before.

• I didn’t do it. That was someone else.

We also use else to talk about something more that we can add to the thing that we talked about before.

• Here’s your coffee. Would you like anything else?
• Did Sam and Gill go to the party? Who else was there?

Common uses

When we want someone to do something, and we want to say that something bad will happen if they don’t do it, we can say, “Or else.” For example, “Don’t tell anyone. Or else.”

In pop culture

Troy is a movie about a war 3000 years ago in Ancient Greece. (We know about the war from a story—Homer’s Iliad—but we don’t know if it really happened.) In this video from the movie, Achilles has to fight the best fighter from Thessaly. Achilles wins the fight in a few seconds, and he asks, “Is there no one else?” When he says this, he’s asking if there are any more people brave enough to fight him.

There are other meanings of else.