anon

The word 'anon' originates from the Old English phrase 'on ān', literally meaning 'into one' or 'in one (moment)'. This phrase evolved through Middle English, where it was commonly used to mean 'immediately' or 'at once'. Over time, its sense softened from immediate urgency to a more general meaning of 'soon' or 'later'. Its journey from a concrete temporal phrase to a standalone adverb demonstrates the common linguistic process of lexicalization, where a frequent multi-word expression fuses into a single word with a specialized meaning.

The word is a contraction of the Middle English phrase "on an," meaning "in one (moment)." It is not productively formed from separable modern English morphemes.