Origin: 1125–75;Middle English;Old English (e)alswāall (wholly or quite) so1; the meaning all so “wholly” thus implies replication, and therefore “additionally, besides”
a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.
a fool or simpleton; ninny.
a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
O.E. eallswa "exactly so," compound of all + so. The demonstrative sense of "similarly" weakened to "in addition to" in 12c., replacing eke. The compound has parallel forms in Ger. also, Du. alzoo. Also-ran is attested from 1896, originally in ref. to horse-races.