Both

Part of speech: pronoun

Pronunciation: /bəʊθ/

Definitions

1. Used to refer to two people or things together, indicating that something applies to each of them equally
2. Referring collectively to two entities or items while highlighting their shared characteristics
3. Indicating that a statement or action pertains equally to two distinct individuals or objects

Etymology: Old English had no single word for "both" that stood alone the way it does now. Speakers used "bā þā" ("both the," roughly "both those"), and the pair gradually fused into one word that Middle English wrote as "bothe" or "boþe." The old form "bā" survived as a separate word, and the Middle English "bō" was the older-style competitor that "both" eventually displaced. The most striking thing here is how far back this goes. "Both" is a living fossil of the Indo-European dual, a grammatical number that marked exactly two things, separate from singular and plural. Most Indo-European languages lost it, but English kept a trace in this pronoun, and its German "beide," Dutch "beide," and Swedish "både" show the same inheritance across the Germanic family. The Old Norse "báðir," which also meant "both," probably reinforced the English form, so the word may owe part of its shape to Viking-age contact with Scandinavian speakers, though the Old English stem was already doing the work.

Synonyms: pair, twain

Antonyms: neither