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OneKitly

otherwise

adverbadjectivecommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈʌð.əˌwaɪz//
  • United States//ˈʌð.ɚˌwaɪz//

Differently, in another way.

adverb

  1. 1

    Differently, in another way.

    Near-synonyms: contrarily, contrastingly

    You may have a point, but I think otherwise.

    Do you want the newest items put up top, or do you want it done otherwise?

    Could I do otherwise than smile?

  2. 2

    In different circumstances; or else.

    I’m not well today, otherwise I would have helped.

    You have to open your umbrella, otherwise you'll get wet.

    They burned the old gun that used to stand in the dark corner up in the garret, close to the stuffed fox that always grinned so fiercely. Perhaps the reason why he seemed in such a ghastly rage was that he did not come by his death fairly. Otherwise his pelt would not have been so perfect. And why else was he put away up there out of sight?—and so magnificent a brush as he had too.

    No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait.

  3. 3

    In all other respects; apart from that; except for this.

    He lost his temper once in a while. Otherwise he behaved rationally.

    There was one rotten apple in an otherwise perfect batch.

    Looking back at more than four years spent going to college I can now positively say that the most meaninful thing I accomplished (the only meaningful thing I accomplished!) was establishing a gay liberation group on campus. Otherwise my college education was almost useless.

    Robin van Persie squandered United's best chance late on but otherwise it was a relatively comfortable afternoon for Liverpool's new goalkeeper Simon Mignolet, who has yet to concede a Premier League goal since his £9m summer move from Sunderland.

Etymology

From Middle English otherwise, othre wise, from Old English on ōþre wīsan (literally “in (on) other/different manner”); equivalent to other + -wise. Compare West Frisian yn oarwei (“otherwise”), Icelandic öðruvísi (“different”).

adjective

  1. 1

    Other than supposed; different.

    He said he didn’t do it, but the evidence was otherwise.

    Statistics need lots of information, digital and otherwise.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).