Beside vs Besides - Beside is a preposition meaning next to. - Besides is a preposition meaning except or in addition to. As a conjunctive adverb, besides means also. But as mentioned in the usage notes below, theres a certain degree of overlap between these two words. * Mr. Moody took several dollar bills out of his pocket and placed the money beside his plate. * Nobody besides me knows the password. * I wasnt in the mood to play tennis, and besides, I was already late for work. Usage Notes: While the two words were once used interchangeably, beside has been reserved as the preposition and besides as the adverb since the late 18th century. But they are still confounded. (Bryan A. Garner, Garners Modern American Usage. Oxford Univ. Press, 2009) Some critics argue that beside and besides should be kept distinct when they are used as prepositions. According to that argument, beside is used only to mean at the side of, as in There was no one in the seat beside me. For the meanings in addition to and except for besides should be used: Besides replacing the back stairs, she fixed the broken banister. No one besides Smitty would say a thing like that. But this distinction is often ignored, even by widely respected writers. While it is true that besides can never mean at the side of, beside regularly appears in print in place of besides. Using beside in this way can be ambiguous, however; the sentence There was no one beside him at the table could mean that he had the table to himself or that the seats next to him were not occupied. (besides, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., 2000) As a number of commentators remark and all conscientious dictionaries show, there is a certain amount of overlap between these two words. The OED shows that historically there was even more than there is now. . .
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:02:55 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015