Ex

Part of speech: noun, preposition

Definitions

1. Someone once in a romantic or marital relationship with you ; not including a stated charge, cost or extra ; the twenty-fourth letter of the English alphabet, written X ; to strike something out or delete it
2. A person you previously dated or married ; without the cost or additions specified in a price ; the letter X as a written symbol ; to cross out a name or item from a list
3. A former lover or spouse of someone ; leaving out or not counting something, as in a price quoted before extras ; the twenty-fourth letter of the alphabet ; to delete or cancel an entry by marking it out

Etymology: The word "ex" is a short English form that appears in several distinct senses, and they come from different routes. The Latin preposition "ex" meant "out of" or "from," and it gave English the prefix "ex-" in words like "exit" and "exclude." When English speakers began using "ex" on its own, it was a clipping of that prefix, and in the sense "former partner" it is a standalone use of the prefix, meaning "former." Two other senses have stranger origins. The sense "expensive" is a clipping of that adjective. The sense used for crossing something out is the most unusual: the strikeout shape is often an X, so the letter came to stand for cancelling or removing something, a meaning drawn from the way a mark looks rather than from any Latin source. One of these senses is a telegraphic abbreviation. The source attributes the "out of, from" meaning to Latin "ex," with the abbreviation originating in telegraphy, where brevity cut costs per word.

Synonyms: former, previous, old

Antonyms: current, present