Again.

America is an adverb. And that adverb is again.

For many, an exclamation point follows: Again! For others, a question mark: Again? Some of us may combine them: Again?! 

And, as we see what happens next in this American experiment, we can all be certain ellipses trail the word. Again …

There are many words on the top of my mind following the reelection of Donald Trump. For now, I will turn to the etymology of this salient word again.

Fast Mash

The history of again involves a lot of grammar and phonology. Here’s a less technical summary:

• Again is from the Old English ongean, meaning “in the opposite direction, back” and with Germanic roots
• The g in ongean was pronounced like a y 
• Ongean evolved into ayen, but a Norse-influenced, hard-g form prevailed in again
• The noun and verb gain (“increase”) are not related to again, but the gain– in gainsay (“to say against”) is
• Again produces against, with an –s related to the possessive –’s and a –t added for other, non-etymological reasons

The etymology of again

Again, meaning “another time, once more,” is no new word in the English language. The Oxford English Dictionary first cites it in The Battle of Maldon, a striking poem commemorating the selfsame skirmish in 991, in which vicious Viking invaders bested dogged Anglo-Saxon warriors.

Again develops from the Old English ongean, an adverb that originally meant “in the opposite direction” or “back.” It was also a preposition, meaning “opposite, in front of.” 

Ongean frequently appeared with the Old English eft, “a second time, again, afterwards,” which perhaps you’ve encountered in the archaic eftsoon(s), “soon after, once again.” The phrase eft ongean meant “back again,” and it may have nudged the sense of ongean towards “once more.” 

Like America, adverbs are weird. With, for example, originally meant “against,” not “together.” But it takes little imagination to see how “back” could extend from a sense of direction to time.

Ongean is a thoroughly Germanic word. It combines on-, a prefix from the very same adverb and preposition on that we use today. The second portion, -gean, derives from a Germanic base with a root sense of “against, toward.” 

Cousins to again populate the Germanic languages. German today, for example, has the adverb and preposition entgegen, “contrary to, against.” More distantly, Old Norse—that vernacular of the Vikings—had gegn. Gegn was equivalent to again, but it was also an adjective meaning “straight, direct, favorable, helpful.” English once adopted a form of this adjective, but its main surviving relative is the gain- in gainsay, “to deny, contradict,” literally “to say against.” 

Both on- and gain- were once productive prefixes to verbs in English; onrise, for instance, once meant “to rise up,” gainstand, “to resist.” 

Unrelated to again is the noun and verb gain, from Old French words variously denoting “profit, advantage” or “to earn, trade.” The deeper roots are Germanic, referring to finding food (hunting, foraging) or feeding animals (grazing, pasturing). 

In Old English, ongean would have been pronounced more like “on-yayuhn,” that g sounding like our y and with a variously stressed diphthong in the second syllable. Overtime, ongean became ayen, especially in southern and central dialects of Middle English, with the unstressed prefix on- becoming reduced to a-, a common phenomenon.

So, why do we now pronounce again with a hard g?

The answer takes us back to Old Norse, back to those Vikings, again. Their conquests—especially in the northern, eastern, and middle regions of modern-day England—greatly influenced the English language. Its impact notably includes core vocabulary, like sky and they, and in some cases pronunciation. Old Norse pronounced their g’s hard, including in its again equivalent, gegn or i-gegn. In northern, more Scandinavian-scented dialects of Middle English, again retained a hard g. For whatever, unknowable, and ultimately incidental reasons of history, this pronunciation prevailed. 

The etymology of against

Now, in our history of again, we’ve encountered the word against. Is there a connection? Yes, the preposition is not only related to again: it also owes itself to again.

Against is recorded in Old English as agenes, based on again and a suffix –s, originally –es. This suffix, which once formed adverbs, is the same as the genitive singular case ending for masculine and neuter nouns in Old English. English largely lost these inflections, but this suffix endures today in such other words as once and twice, and the Old English genitive ending lives on as our possessive markers, –’s or -s'(s), as in America’s future. 

Where did the –t in against come from? 

Called an excrescent, intrusive, or parasitic speech sound in phonetics, that –t invited itself in during the 1300s, perhaps as a result of assimilation with the article the, which frequently followed against, or in confusion with the superlative form with –st  or words ending in it. Amongst, amidst, betwixt, whilst, and, more recently, the humorous whomst all also display this excrescent -t.

Thanks to those final consonants, the vowel in against was shortened, which may have had a knock-on effect on the pronunciation of again—except for those who still pronounce it to rhyme with gain, like our Canadians neighbors, who may be greeting some new American friends. 

***

Then again, America can also be a preposition—and it can be against, in its many senses of “in opposition to.” 

Against? Against?! Against! Against. 

In democratically, dramatically, electing Donald Trump again, a majority indeed voted against incumbency, among other things.

But that does not mean we cannot continue to stand up against … 

Greed and grift. Against racism and sexism and the complex forms they take. Against cynicism and despair. Against misinformation and disinformation. Against isolation, especially from each other in the algorithm-addled addictiveness of social media. Against growing wealth inequality and, for goodness’ sake, the climate crisis. Against—as sparked our very American experiment in the first place—despotism.

And this, I choose to hope, is something we can all be for.

For more grammatical etymology, find out why the preposition to was extended to the adverb too.