Except vs Unless - What's the difference?
except | unless |
To exclude; to specify as being an exception.
* 2007 , Glen Bowersock, ‘Provocateur’, London Review of Books 29:4, page 17:
To take exception, to object (to' or ' against ).
* Shakespeare
*, vol.1, New York Review Books 2001, p.312:
* 1658 , Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial , Penguin 2005, page 23:
* 1749 , Henry Fielding, Tom Jones , Folio Society 1973, page 96:
With the exception of; but.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2014-06-14, volume=411, issue=8891, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= With the exception (that); used to introduce a clause, phrase or adverb forming an exception or qualification to something previously stated.
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*
*:"I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim, "but I was at Winchester and New College." ¶ "That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve. Then I ran away and sold papers in the streets, and anything else that I could pick up a few coppers by—except steal.."
*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers), title=(A Cuckoo in the Nest)
, chapter=2 (lb) Unless; used to introduce a hypothetical case in which an exception may exist.
*1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , (w) IX:
*:And they sayde: We have no moo but five loves and two fisshes, except we shulde goo and bye meate for all this people.
*1621 , (Robert Burton), (The Anatomy of Melancholy) , New York 2001, p.106:
*:Offensive wars, except the cause be very just, I will not allow of.
Except on a specified condition; if not.
*
* 1839 , Denison Olmsted, A Compendium of Astronomy Page 95
Unless is a conjunction of except.
As conjunctions the difference between except and unless
is that except is with the exception (that); used to introduce a clause, phrase or adverb forming an exception or qualification to something previously stated while unless is except on a specified condition; if not.As a verb except
is to exclude; to specify as being an exception.As a preposition except
is with the exception of; but.except
English
Alternative forms
* excepte (rare or archaic)Verb
(en verb)- But this [ban on circumcision] must have been a provocation, as the emperor Antoninus Pius later acknowledged by excepting the Jews.
- to except to a witness or his testimony
- Except thou wilt except against my love.
- Yea, but methinks I hear some man except at these words […].
- The Athenians'' might fairly except against the practise of ''Democritus to be buried up in honey; as fearing to embezzle a great commodity of their Countrey
- he was a great lover of music, and perhaps, had he lived in town, might have passed for a connoisseur; for he always excepted against the finest compositions of Mr Handel.
Preposition
(English prepositions)It's a gas, passage=One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city’s effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.}}
Synonyms
* apart from * bar * but * other than * saveDerived terms
* except for * except for opinionConjunction
(English Conjunctions)citation, passage=Mother
Quotations
* (English Citations of "except")Statistics
*Anagrams
* 1000 English basic wordsunless
English
Alternative forms
* unlesse (obsolete)Conjunction
(English Conjunctions)- I’m leaving unless I get a pay rise (AmE: raise).
- Secondly, When a body is once in motion it will continue to move forever, unless something stops it. When a ball is struck on the surface of the earth, the friction of the earth and the resistance of the air soon stop its motion.