What's the difference between yet another and another?
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1Any one else, here, enjoying the irony of (currently) 5 versions of very similar answers to this question?– user528375Commented Jul 30 at 13:06
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5 Answers
Yet another is more emphatic. It implies that the list of things being counted is getting really long, and suggests a certain amount of impatience or irritation on the part of the speaker.
You get the first one (of whatever it is that is under discussion), then you get another of them, and then you get yet another of them.
So, it could be argued that 'yet another' implies at least the third.
It could also mean that something is happening tediously often:
First one interruption, then another, and another, and then yet another. Aaargh! How am I meant to get any work done?
answered Jan 14, 2011 at 4:38
"Yet another" isn't just more emphatic. It also changes the focus.
Consider the following sentences.
Another question was asked on the subject.
Yet another question was asked on the subject.
In the first sentence, the focus may be on the question or the subject. In the second sentence, the focus is on the fact that there are so many questions.
As explained by @JSBangs and @Jonathan, "yet another" is used as an emphases on the fact that there were many more before.
Often it can be used as an expression of the exasperation to see something for the penultimate times
Yet another internet meme...
In fact, it is also used at the beginning of acronyms designated something that was made so much time that finding an original name is quite difficult.
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I was just going to comment about the use in software names when I noticed (as the comment box was appearing) that you had already sort-of mentioned it. (But I'm a bit puzzled as to why you didn't actually mention software!)– SamBCommented Jan 14, 2011 at 20:31
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@SamB :) I asked this question mainly because I have noticed many programmers named their library
Yet Another .... Commented Jan 15, 2011 at 0:19
For programmers, it can also mean a new take on an existing topic, see e.g. https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Y/Yet-Another.html:
Yet Another: adj.
[From Unix's yacc(1), ‘Yet Another Compiler-Compiler’, a LALR parser generator]
Of your own work: A humorous allusion often used in titles to acknowledge that the topic is not original, though the content is. As in ‘Yet Another AI Group’ or ‘Yet Another Simulated Annealing Algorithm’.
Of others' work: Describes something of which there are already far too many. See also YA-, YABA, [YAUN].
