Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Already for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "already" — an adverb, pronounced /ɔːlˈredi/, with the stress on "red".
Narrator: Already means before now, or sooner than expected — the thing has happened, and the clock is mildly surprised.
Narrator: In plain English, already is the earliness marker — done before you asked, arrived before you looked.
Narrator: It compressed from "all ready" — fully prepared — and the preparedness slid into earliness over the centuries.
Narrator: That parent survives separately — "all ready" as two words still means everyone prepared: we're all ready to leave.
Narrator: One word, one L — already; two words, two meanings apart: the classic English spelling trap.
Narrator: It carries a note of surprise — "finished already?" marvels at speed; "it's already dark" sighs at the season.
Narrator: Grammar seats it mid-sentence mostly — she has already left — or at the end for emphasis: she's left already!
Narrator: So remember: already is earliness with raised eyebrows — done before now, and slightly ahead of everyone's clock.
Speaker A: Parental time-travel report — my son asked if it's the weekend yet on Tuesday, and my mother says Christmas is "already around the corner" in August. The word bends time in both directions!
Speaker B: The elastic adverb! ALREADY means before now, or sooner than expected — compressed from "all ready", fully prepared, with the readiness sliding into earliness over the centuries. Grandmothers and Augusts included.
Speaker A: So "all ready" and "already" split into different words?
Speaker B: A proper divorce! ALL READY, two words, still means everyone prepared: "the bags are all ready by the door". ALREADY, one word, one L, means before now: "the taxi's already here". Two words of preparation, one word of surprise.
Speaker A: Example sentences with the surprise intact?
Speaker B: "You've finished already? That took me all day"; "I've already seen this film — twice"; "by ten she'd already answered forty emails" — admiration, cinema fatigue, and terrifying colleagues.
Speaker A: Common mistakes with it?
Speaker B: The ALL READY spelling swap tops the list — "we're already to go" is the classic slip; if you mean prepared, keep the two words. Then the YET confusion: ALREADY lives in positives and surprised questions; YET haunts negatives — "I haven't finished yet", but "I've already finished".
Speaker A: Already for done, yet for not-done — the pair sorted! Placement rules?
Speaker B: Flexible but flavoured — mid-sentence is neutral: "she has already left"; sentence-end adds feeling: "she's left already!" And American English happily asks "did you eat already?" where British leans to "have you already eaten?" — same word, different table manners.
Speaker A: And that exasperated "enough already!"?
Speaker B: The word's comedy career! "Enough already!" — stop, please — is American-flavoured exasperation with Yiddish roots, now understood everywhere. Already as pure impatience: the timeline has been exceeded, cease immediately!
Speaker A: Close relatives?
Speaker B: "By now" measures against expectation — "they should be there by now"; "previously" is the formal historian; "so soon" carries the surprise without the completion; "yet" is the mirror twin for things undone. "Already" keeps both the earliness and the eyebrows!
Speaker A: And somehow this lesson is already over.
Speaker B: Time flies when the adverb behaves!
Speaker B: Let's use "already" in AI prompts — a state word: it handles what exists before the code runs — data, accounts, and work done.
Speaker A: So already in a prompt respects what's there?
Speaker B: Exactly. For duplicates, you'd write:
Prompt: Handle users who already have an account in my signup flow — when an email already exists, offer sign-in instead of an error, with a reset-password link right there. Recognise the returner, so nobody is punished for coming back.
Speaker B: "Already exists" is half of all signup bugs — naming it makes the AI handle it.
Speaker A: Nobody punished for returning — signup grace! Imports?
Speaker B: The skip-existing prompt:
Prompt: Make my CSV import skip rows that already exist — match on email, update changed fields instead of duplicating, and report imported, updated, and skipped counts at the end. Respect what's already there, and say what you did.
Speaker A: Respect and report — import manners! Progress?
Speaker B: The resume prompt:
Prompt: Show users what they've already completed in my course app — finished lessons ticked, the resume button jumping straight to the next unfinished one, and progress kept across devices. Never make anyone redo what's already done.
Speaker A: Never redo the done — the learner's charter! Saves?
Speaker B: The idempotent prompt:
Prompt: Protect my payment button from double-clicks — if the order was already submitted, ignore repeat clicks and show the confirmation instead of charging twice, disabling the button while processing. One click or five, one charge — always.
Speaker A: One more?
Speaker B: The prefill prompt:
Prompt: Prefill my forms with what the user already told us — name, address, and preferences from their profile filled in automatically, editable but never asked from scratch again. Asking twice says we weren't listening; already-known means already-filled.
Speaker A: So "already" greets the returner, skips the duplicate, resumes the course, blocks the double charge, and prefills the form.
Speaker B: Exactly — the before-now word: honour what already exists, and the app feels like it remembers.
Already — meaning in Arabic & definition More A courses GL Dictionary