even
Language: English
Part of speech: adv
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈiːvn̩/
ipa: /ˈivn̩/
ipa: [ˈivn̩]
rhymes: -iːvən
Forms: form: eben
form: e'en
Etymology: From Middle English even, from Old English efn (“flat; level, even, equal”), from Proto-West Germanic *ebn, from Proto-Germanic *ebnaz, from Proto-Indo-European *(h₁)em-no- (“equal, straight; flat, level, even”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian íeuwen (“even, flat”), West Frisian even (“even”), Alemannic German ëben (“even”), Cimbrian ébane (“even”), Dutch even (“even, equal, same”), effen (“leveled”), German eben (“even, flat, level”), Danish jævn (“even, flat, smooth”), Icelandic jafn (“even”), Norwegian Bokmål jevn (“even, smooth”), Norwegian Nynorsk jamn (“even, smooth”), Swedish jämn (“even, level, smooth”), Gothic 𐌹𐌱𐌽𐍃 (ibns, “even”), Old Cornish eun (“equal, right”) (attested in Vocabularium Cornicum eun-hinsic (“iustus, i. e., just”)), Old Breton eun (“equal, right”) (attested in Eutychius Glossary eunt (“aequus, i. e., equal”)), Middle Breton effn, Breton eeun, Sanskrit अम्नस् (amnás, “(adverb) just, just now; at once”).
The verb descends from Middle English evenen, from Old English efnan; the adverb from Middle English evene, from Old English efne.
The traditional proposal connecting the Germanic adjective with the root Proto-Indo-European *h₂eym- (Latin imāgō (“picture, image, likeness, copy”), Latin aemulus (“competitor, rival”), Sanskrit यम (yamá, “pair, twin”)) is problematic from a phonological point of view.
For the meaning development compare with Latin aequus (“equal, level, even, flat, horizontal”), Russian ро́вный (róvnyj, “even, level, flat, smooth”), ра́вный (rávnyj, “equal”), по́ровну (pórovnu, “in equal parts”).
Senses: examples: text: I fulfilled my instructions even as I had promised.
text: You are leaving tonight? — Even so.
text: This is my commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
text: But on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark.
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 177:
glosses: Exactly, just, fully.
examples: text: Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes.
text: Did you even make it through the front door?
text: That was before I was even born.
text: He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 2:
text: Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers,[…]. Even such a boat as the Mount Vernon offered a total deck space so cramped as to leave secrecy or privacy well out of the question, even had the motley and democratic assemblage of passengers been disposed to accord either.
ref: 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
text: He read the letter aloud. Sophia listened with the studied air of one for whom, even in these days, a title possessed some surreptitious allurement.
ref: 1921, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1925, →OCLC:
text: Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.
ref: 2013 June 29, “Unspontaneous combustion”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 29:
glosses: In reality; implying an extreme example in the case mentioned, as compared to the implied reality.
examples: text: I was strong before, but now I am even stronger.
glosses: Emphasizing a comparative.
examples: text: My favorite actor is Jack Nicklaus. Jack Nicholson, even.
glosses: Signalling a correction of one's previous utterance; rather, that is.
Synonyms: sense: exactly, just, fully
word: definitely
word: precisely
word: exactly
sense: implying extreme example
word: so much as
sense: emphasizing comparative
word: still
sense: correction to previous utterance
word: in other words
Derived terms: word: can't even
word: don't even think about it
word: even a blind pig can find an acorn
word: even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while
word: even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while
word: even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then
word: even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while
word: even as
word: even as we speak
word: even a worm will turn
word: even Homer nods
word: even if
word: even if one's life depended on it
word: even Jove nods
word: even more
word: even so
word: even still
word: even though
word: I hardly even know her
word: it is not even funny
word: it isn't even funny
word: it's not even funny
word: not even
word: not even once
word: not even one
word: not even wrong
word: the ink was not even dry
word: what is this I don't even