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than

conjunctionprepositionadverbtop 1 000 in film dialogue

  • //ðæn//
  • //ðɛn//
  • //ðən//
  • /[ðn̩]/

Used in comparisons, to introduce the basis of comparison.

conjunction

  1. 1

    Used in comparisons, to introduce the basis of comparison.

    Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.

    The artist worried more than was necessary: there were a lot of people at the exhibition, more than came last year.

    Answer me if you can, any other way, than because the Scriptures, which are infallible, Say so.

    she's taller than I am; she found his advice more witty than helpful; we have less work today than we had yesterday; We had no (other) choice than to return home; I love you more than (what) she does, but less than he, or than I do your sisters.

  2. 2

    obsoleteBecause; for.

    If thou say yes, then puttest thou on Christ (that is, the wisdome of God, the Father) unkunning, unpower, or euil will: for than he could not make his rule so good as an other did his.

    You shall also take the fine earth or mould which is found in the hollow of old Willow trees, rising from the root almost to the middle of the Tree, at least so far as the tree is hollow, for than this, there is no earth or mould finer or richer.

Etymology

From Middle English than, thanne (“than; then”), from Old English þanne, a variant of þonne (“then; when; than”), from Proto-West Germanic *þannē, an alteration of *þan (“then; than”), from Proto-Germanic *þan (“then; than”), from earlier *þam, from Proto-Indo-European *tóm, accusative masculine of *só (“that”, demonstrative pronoun). Cognate with Dutch dan (“then; than”), German denn (“for; so”), German dann (“then”). Doublet of then.

preposition

  1. 1

    Introduces a comparison, and is associated with comparatives, and with words such as more, less, and fewer. Typically, it seeks to measure the force of an adjective or similar description between two predicates.

    Patients diagnosed more recently are probably surviving an average of longer than two years.

    No player is more skillful than Greg.

adverb

  1. 1

    At that time; then.

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).