Withalle

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. Archaic adverb meaning besides or in addition to what has been said ; an older preposition meaning along with or together with something else
2. Formerly used to mean also, moreover, or in addition ; once used as a preposition indicating accompaniment, as in together with
3. An obsolete term for furthermore or likewise ; a dated preposition expressing that one thing goes along or is combined with another

Etymology: "Withalle" is a Middle English adverb, and its history is a plain one: it is a compound of "with" and "alle," meaning "all," and it shows how English once glued two words together to express a thought that we now handle with a single adverb. In Middle English it could mean "in addition," "also," or "moreover," and it appears in the sense of "at the same time" or "along with everything else." The phrase was built from the same parts as "withal," which survives in archaic English. The second element, "all," is the familiar Old English "eall," and the first, "with," is Old English "wið," meaning "against" or "toward" before it came to mean "accompanied by." The combination eventually softened into "withal" as the final "-e" dropped away and the two-word sense became one unit. Because the word sounds so unlike its parts, readers often mistake it for a typographical error, yet it is a straightforward compound.