English
elsewhere
Elsewhere comes from Middle English elswher, from Old English elles hwǣr ‘elsewhere’, i.e. else + where.
- Old Englishc. 450–1150elles hwǣr1‘elsewhere’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500elswher1‘elsewhere’
- Englishearliest quotation 2000elsewhere1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English elsewhere
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 2000, Angela M Jeannet: “We are back on the Ligurian coast, from which…”.
Lineage
- Old Englishc. 450–1150elles hwǣrWiktionary, English elsewhere‘elsewhere’
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500elswherWiktionary, English elsewhere‘elsewhere’
- Englishearliest quotation 2000elsewhereWiktionary, English elsewhere. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 2000, Angela M Jeannet: “We are back on the Ligurian coast, from which…”
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with elsewhere, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *kʷos ‘interrogative pronoun’
through Proto-Germanic *hwaz ‘what’
5 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
adv Synonym of somewhere else: in, at, or to some other place.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “elsewhere”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Old English elles hwǣr / elsewhere