You are my second husband. We parse this sentence. A second is short, a sixtieth of a minute. A second comes after the first. Second constitutes the number two in a sequence. I already broke my word once. Oh my dear, you are not secondary, lower, subordinate, subsidiary, lesser, inferior. I brought the children with me, most of the furniture in our new house. Second in command? No. I like seconding your motions. To formally support or endorse. Backup, encourage. More promising. Second base? Not far enough. Leap second. Second future. Second future tense, obsolete. I will have finished by tomorrow, we read, I shall have gone by then. A grammar to mark the future. Second language. Second nature, as if natural or instinctive. You like second self, n. a friend who agrees absolutely with one’s tastes and opinions, or for whose welfare one cares as much as for one’s own. After Latin alter idem. We linger over second helpings. Second breakfast. Second honeymoon. You say, it looks more French, the further we scroll. Even second mortgage sounds good now. The word begins to blur. Francis Bacon, 1597. It is a good precept generally in seconding another: yet to adde somewhat of ones owne. A grammar of prediction. We suppose. We second.
