Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective One and the other; relating to or being two in conjunction.
  • pronoun The one and the other.
  • conjunction Used with and to indicate that each of two things in a coordinated phrase or clause is included.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • The one and the other; the two; the pair or the couple, in reference to two persons or things specially mentioned, and denoting that neither of them is to be excluded, either absolutely or (as with either) as an alternative, from the statement.
  • [The genitive both's (ME. bothes, bothers, earlier bother, bathre) is now disused; in the earlier period it was joined usually with the genitive plural of the personal pronoun. Subsequently the simple both, equivalent to of both, was used.
  • Including the two (terms or notions mentioned): an adverb preceding two coördinate terms (words or phrases) joined by and, and standing thus in an apparent conjunctional correlation, bothand, equivalent to not only … but also. Both is thus used sometimes before three or more coördinate terms.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • conjunction As well; not only; equally.
  • adjective The one and the other; the two; the pair, without exception of either.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • determiner Each of the two; one and the other.
  • determiner obsolete Each of more than two.
  • conjunction including both (used with and)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective (used with count nouns) two considered together; the two

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bothe, probably from Old Norse bādhar.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English boþe, from Old Norse báðir

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