else

/ɛls/adjective, adverb, conjunction

else is spelled E-L-S-E. The wrong spelling people search most is alse: about 140 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Else is an adjective meaning “Other; in addition to previously mentioned items”.

How many letters and syllables are in else?

Letters	4: E-L-S-E
Syllables	1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing	240 times per million words; the 417th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched	2; the most searched, alse, about 140 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Same letters	lees seel slee sele

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell else?

Else is spelled E-L-S-E. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for else in either form.

elsethe right spelling1,170 searches a month

alsea in place of e140 searches a month

eslel and s swapped70 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is else?

Else appears 240 times per million words in written English, the 417th most frequent word form in the list.

else0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce else?

US /ɛls/
/ɛlts/

Else has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-else.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with else?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as else (/ɛls/).

Spelled with the same letters in another order: lees, seel, slee, sele.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

What does else mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

adjective

1
Other; in addition to previously mentioned items.
The instructor is busy. Can anyone else help me?

adverb

1
Otherwise, if not.
How else (= in what other way) can it be done?

conjunction

1
For otherwise; or else.
Then the Wronskian of f and g must be nonzero, else they could not be linearly independent.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Else in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
French	d'autre (other), sinon, autrement (word that implies any result with the exception…)
German	anders, sonst, anderer (other), andernfalls, ansonsten (word that implies any result with the exception…)
Portuguese	mais (other), senão, em vez de, além disso (word that implies any result with the exception…)
Spanish	más (other), sino (word that implies any result with the exception…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does else come from?

From Middle English ells, elles, from Old English elles (“other, otherwise, different”), from Proto-West Germanic *alljas, from Proto-Germanic *aljas (“of another, of something else”), genitive of *aljaz (“other”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂élyos, from *h₂el- (“other”).