ABSTRACT
Anyway tends to be colloquial and it usually implies a dismissal of what has preceded it:
I don’t want to see her; anyway I’m too busy.
Anyways is regionally marked and regarded as nonstandard.
Literally, this word means ‘without speech’ but it is often applied to the sudden or gradual loss of language as a result of age, an accident or a stroke. Most people have some experience of ‘nominal aphasia’, the temporary loss of nouns. This reveals itself in two ways: the inability to remember the name for something:
What’s the word for that dessert I love?
