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ἄν

Pronunciation: /án/

“ἄν” is an Ancient Greek word. Its 11 meanings in English:

particle

  1. in that case and future tense
  2. Expresses future potentiality: would or could do or be doing
  3. Expresses present or rarely past potentiality: were doing, would be doing
  4. Expresses past potentiality
  5. Past or rarely present unreality: would have done, would do
  6. Present or past unreality: would do, would be doing; would have been doing
  7. Present or less commonly past unreality
  8. Expresses iteration or habituality: had done, had been doing; would have done, would have been doing; used to do
  9. Expresses generality, and often translatable with present or future tense in English
  10. With εἰ (ei), contracted to ἐάν (eán), expresses a general condition that is likely to occur
  11. When combined with infinitive or participle in indirect speech, represents a finite verb with ἄν (án) in direct speech

Etymology

Uncertain; has been connected to similar particles in other Indo-European languages, especially Latin an and Gothic 𐌰𐌽 (an), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂en. Beekes derives it instead from οὐκ ᾰ̓́ν (ouk ắn) as a rebracketing of οὐ κᾰν (ou kăn), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂óyu-kn̥ (literally “long time begin”), whence also synonymous Ionic κεν (ken) > κε (ke).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.