Else means other than the one already mentioned. Somebody else, what else, nothing else.
It follows the word it modifies rather than preceding it, which is unusual in English: somebody else, not else somebody. Or else means otherwise, and on its own it is a threat — do it, or else. Anything else is what a shopkeeper asks. Note the possessive somebody else's, where the apostrophe goes on else rather than on somebody, which is settled now and was argued about for a century.
1adverbelseOther than the one already mentioned.~77%
“There was nothing else in the drawer at all.”
2adverbotherwiseOtherwise, introducing a consequence.~23%
“Book early, or else you get the seat by the toilet.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
else is a word of alternative.
Old English elles meant otherwise, and it is a genitive form of a lost word meaning other — the same root as Latin alius, which gives alias and alien. Else is a fossil of a grammatical case English no longer has.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂el- (other)
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂élyos
Proto-Germanic
*aljas — of another, of something else
Proto-West Germanic
*alljas
Old English
elles — other, otherwise, different
Middle English
ells
English, today
else
Built from
From Middle English ells, elles, from Old English elles (“other, otherwise, different”), from Proto-West Germanic alljas, from Proto-Germanic aljas (“of another, of something else”), genitive of aljaz (“other”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂élyos, from h₂el- (“other”). Cognate with Old Frisian elles (“other”), Old High German elles, ellies (“other”), Danish eller (“or”), Danish ellers (“otherwise”), Swedish eljes, eljest (“or else, otherwise”), Norwegian elles (“else, otherwise”), Gothic 𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌹𐍃 (“other”), Latin alius (“other, another”), Ancient Greek ἄλλος, αἶλος, modern Greek αλλιώς (“otherwise, else”), Proto-Slavic olni.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA