Something

From BluWiki

Something

Etymology

Compound of some + thing.

Pronoun

1. an unspecified object

   I must have forgotten to pack something, but I can't think of what.

2. an event that breaks up a period of calm

   Isn't something meant to happen?

3. someone or something that has a quality to a moderate degree

   The performance was something of a disappointment.

4. a talent that is hard to pin down

   You've got something.

5. somebody or something who is special in some way

   You're really something!

Abbreviations

• (especially in dictionaries): sth

Derived terms

• somethingth

Adverb

1. somewhat; to a degree

   the baby looks something like his father.

Verb

1. Applied to an action whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g. from words of a song.
   • 1890, William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes [1]

     He didn’t apply for it for a long time, and then there was a hitch about it, and it was somethinged—vetoed, I believe she said.

   • 2003, George Angel, “Allegoady,” in Juncture, Lara Stapleton and Veronica Gonzalez edd. [2]

     She hovers over the something somethinging and awkwardly lowers her bulk.

   • 2005, Floyd Skloot, A World of Light [3]

     “Oh how we somethinged on the hmmm hmm we were wed. Dear, was I ever on the stage?”

Noun

1. an important person; a somebody

   He looks a something behind that big desk.

2. An object whose nature is yet to be defined.
3. An object whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g., from words of a song. Also used to refer to an object earlier indefinitely referred to as 'something' (pronoun sense).
   • 1999, Nicholas Clapp, The Road to Ubar [4]

     What was the something the pilot saw, the something worth killing for?

   • 2004, Theron Q Dumont, The Master Mind [5]

     Moreover, in all of our experience with these sense impressions, we never lose sight of the fact that they are but incidental facts of our mental existence, and that there is a Something Within which is really the Subject of these sense reports—a Something to which these reports are presented, and which receives them.

   • 2004, Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives [6]

     She wiped something with a cloth, wiped at the wall shelf, and put the something on it, clinking glass.