Talk:elsewise

"Chiefly" UK

I'm a speaker of the Great Lakes dialect and, while I recognize that my use is dialectical, I use elsewise vastly more often than otherwise in casual conversation. Can we source its usage as "chiefly UK"? ThaesOfereode (talk) 06:37, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Spot on. I'm AmE-1 as well, and this word is neither rare (which Wiktionary used to say until 2016) nor any particularly strong sign of BrE rather than AmE. Almost certainly (although I lack time and tools to prove it philologically), there was probably a time in the past when those things were true, but they aren't anymore. Update to my comment here: I just checked MWU at "elsewise", and it does not contain any labels about rarity or BrE. Good. One more thought: I would bet a fiver that the influence of studying programming 101 has brought the word into greater use in recent decades, like post-1980 as opposed to pre-1980, because anyone who thinks about if/else if logic (not only in coding but also just in pseudocoding and critical thinking) may easily end up reaching for the word in cognition (word-finding). Quercus solaris (talk) 16:01, 7 February 2023 (UTC)