Eaft

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. An archaic adverb meaning once more or afterwards ; a small amphibian or lizard-like creature, such as a newt
2. Old word for doing something again or later on ; a small salamander-like reptile or newt that lives near water
3. Archaic term meaning a second time or subsequently ; a little newt, sometimes called a lizard, found in damp woodland

Etymology: "Eft" is an Old English word meaning "again" or "a second time," and it survives in English mainly in older and dialect use. Its ancestry runs back to a Germanic root shared with German "ab" and Dutch "weer" in some senses, but the English form itself stands on its own in the Old English record, where it appears in texts from before the year 900. The word's most interesting twist is that its sense of "again" once sat alongside a noun meaning "a newt" or "a small lizard." Such creatures were common in English and Scottish dialect, and the same Old English stem gave us "eft" for the newt, the young of the eft-like amphibian. The two uses are separate words that happened to share a form, so it is easy to confuse them. Today "eft" appears mostly in poetry, folklore, and regional speech, where its meaning is still clear from context.