alongside
Americanadverb
preposition
-
beside; by the side of.
The dog ran alongside me all the way.
-
Informal. alongside of, compared with.
Alongside of his brother, he is no student at all.
preposition
adverb
Etymology
Origin of alongside
Explanation
Use the adverb alongside when two things are right next to each other, like a boat and a dock or a hunter and her loyal dog. If you pull up alongside your friend's car in a parking lot, it means that you've parked directly beside it. Alongside can also imply cooperation, as when a baker's assistant works alongside him, kneading dough and wiping flour off the counter. Alongside was once a phrase, either "along side" or "along the side," both primarily used in a nautical sense, to talk about boats. In the 1700s it became a single word.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They generally have large troves of AI-generated text alongside content written by humans -- and compare the two.
From Barron's ● Sep. 25, 2026
David Starkey’s account of Henry VIII’s reign takes us, day by day, from Greenwich and Westminster to Hampton Court, alongside Henry and his successive queens.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
But alongside TLC, Aaliyah and Destiny's Child, she developed a passion for rock, indie and punk.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
The exhibition puts designer Pierre-Olivier Persin’s bust of the creature alongside the syringes, vials and other medical paraphernalia from the mysterious Substance kit that sets the movie’s nightmare in motion.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
Named for the coalfields that had been found alongside the nearby Bluestone River, the Bluefields sat amid some of the largest deposits of bituminous coal in the world.
From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
