other

1. not comparableSee other (determiner) below.

   Pick up the phone and find out who's on the other end.

   Synonyms: additional, another

2. not comparableSecond.

   I get paid every other week.

   Synonyms: alternate

3. formalnot comparableAlien.

   In Matthew's account, the law remains intact, as does virtually everything except that critical belief in Jesus as the Messiah (obviously no small thing), and this is not enough to make Matthew completely other from its Jewish origins.

   2010 April 20, anonymous author, “Letters”, in Christian Century, volume 127, number 8, page 6

   Synonyms: foreign

4. not comparableformal or puristicDifferent.

   it is inherent, rather, in the revolutionary attempt of the West to externalize the idea of a source of meaning wholly other than what is embodied in human conventions and hierarchies.

   2001 Fall, Ralph C. Hancock, “The Modern Revolution and the Collapse of Moral Analogy: Tocqueville and Guizot.”, in Perspectives on Political Science, volume 30, number 4, page 213

   Synonyms: disparate, dissimilar, distinctive, distinguishable, diverse, different, differing, dissimilar · Antonyms: same

5. not comparableobsoleteLeft, as opposed to right.

   A diſtaffe in her other hand ſhe had, / Vpon the which ſhe litle ſpinnes, but ſpils, / And faynes to weaue falſe tales and leaſings bad, / To throw amongſt the good, which others had diſprad.

   1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, stanza 36, page 351

plural others

1. An other, another (person, etc), more often rendered as another.

   Show me one other.

   1 more example

   I'm afraid little Robbie does not always play well with others.

2. The other one; the second of two.

   One boat is not better than the other.

   3 more examples

   Why not tell one or other of your parents?

   Study gives strength to the mind; conversation, grace: the first apt to give stiffness, the other suppleness: one gives substance and form to the statue, the other polishes it.

   1699, William Temple, Heads designed for an essay on conversations

   He had one hand on the bounce bottle—and he'd never let go of that since he got back to the table—but he had a handkerchief in the other and was swabbing his deadlights with it.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

1. Not the one or ones previously referred to.

   Earning less than $2,000 a month, I have no other source of income except for gifts from relatives.

   4 more examples

   The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 58

   “[…] the awfully hearty sort of Christmas cards that people do send to other people that they don't know at all well. You know. The kind that have mottoes like Here's rattling good luck and roaring good cheer, / With lashings of food and great hogsheads of beer. […]”

   1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC

   “By the way,” Jessamy went on, “what’s your other name? You never told me.” “Stubbs,” said Billy, “William Stubbs!”.

   1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 98

   [Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.

   2013 July 20, “Out of the gloom”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845

1. not comparableobsoleteOtherwise.

   I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest, Lay down my soul at state; if you think other, Remove your thought;

   c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii], page 331, column 1

   2 more examples

   Weigh also, the pretty escape of the disguised attempt of the party that seemed to be in so great peril, who can believe other, then that it was a made matter, to continue a belief, whom they think they have inchaunted at their wills.

   1655, The Compleat Ambassador or two treatises of the intended marriage of Queen Elizabeth of glorious memory, page 321

   That he knew from Monsieur Meerman, I had been the occasion of giving him any Credit in England of an honest sincere Man, and he would never lose mine upon that occasion by giving the King Cause to believe other of him.

   1740, William Temple, Letters written by Sir William Temple, bart., and other ministers of state, both at home and abroad, page 184

present singular third person others · participle present othering · participle past othered · past othered

1. transitiveTo regard, label, or treat as an "other", as not part of the same group; to view as different and alien.

   Others with admitted addictions are Othered and sadly, forever stigmatized.

   2010, Ronald L. Jackson, I, Encyclopedia of Identity

   4 more examples

   "Rican" is code for its homonym, "redskin," through which they othered this non-Mexican ethnic group.

   2005, Kristen A. Myers, Racetalk: racism hiding in plain sight

   That is, whilst Lesfest organisers are othering women who are not born female (thus producing a kind of lesbian-normativity), the Australian WOMAN Network is othering women who have not had surgical sex reassignment (thus producing a kind of "trans-normativity").

   2006, Angela Pattatucci Aragon, Challenging lesbian norms

   […] and Black males have not taken her seriously politically (gender); and the color of her skin has marginalized her (race and "othered" her when compared with White women, who have also worked to silence her political views.

   2008, John F. Borland, The under-representation of Black females in NCAA Division I women's basketball head coaching positions, University of Connecticut

   “You’re coming here and you’re expecting that everybody’s Black, so I’m going to be OK,” Ms. Davis said. “But then you get here and then you’re being ‘othered’” — viewed as different and separate.

   2024 February 16, Colette Coleman, “Blaxit: Tired of Racism, Black Americans Try Life in Africa”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC

2. transitiveTo treat as different or separate; segregate; ostracise.

   In this scenario, the young lady who had spoken had been othered by her peers and her response to my question had been dismissed as invalid despite the fact that she was alright.

   2007, Christopher Emdin, City University of New York. Urban Education, Exploring the contexts of urban science classrooms

plural Others

1. human sciencesRadical alterity or otherness conceived or reified as a separate entity; “other people” altogether in their difference from oneself.

   The transformations of writing bear an ethical as well as an aesthetic or literary significance; writing implies orientation towards the Other in the midst of which a renewal of the self becomes possible.

   2006, Lisa Guenther, The Gift of the Other: Levinas and the Politics of Reproduction, →ISBN, page 123

   2 more examples

   In its most fundamental dimension, sacrifice is a “gift of reconciliation” to the Other, destined to appease its desire. Sacrifice conceals the abyss of the Other’s desire, more precisely: it conceals the Other’s lack, inconsistency, “inexistence,” that transpires in this desire. Sacrifice is a guarantee that “the Other exists” […]

   1992, Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out, →ISBN, page 56

   Critiquing the Western philosophical tradition of privileging the autonomy of the ‘I’, in which he uses Heidegger as exemplar, Levinas provocatively argues that the ‘I’ ultimately exists to be responsible for the Other – a responsibility based not on reciprocity (whether the Other behaves in accordance to expectations of the ‘I’) but on an asymmetrical and infinite kind of responsibility.

   2015, Jonathan Corpus Ong, The Poverty of Television: The Mediation of Suffering in Class-Divided Philippines, →ISBN, page 17

1. A surname.

plural Others

1. A male given name from Old Norse, of rare usage, used as an aristocratic heritage familial given name.