Q: I have long been familiar with the expression “time and time again,” but in the last week I have heard it truncated to “time and again.” What’s going on here? Is the latter simply a shortened form with the same meaning, or is it meant to convey something different?
A: You’ll be surprised to hear this, but “time and again” isn’t a truncated version of “time and time again.” The longer expression is an inflated version of the shorter one.
The expression appears to have originated in early 19th-century America. The earliest examples we’ve found in historical databases are from newspapers published in Virginia and Massachusetts.
The oldest mention we’ve seen is from a criticism of England’s Prince Regent (and later King George IV), credited to the Boston Patriot, and reprinted in the Richmond (Va.) Enquirer, April 28, 1812:
“This right illustrious personage is adding with careless prodigality to the vast circle of misery and ruin, by incurring obligations which he has no means of discharging, by rioting on the wealth of industry and labor, and calling time and again on the honest farmer and the plodding mechanic to pay for his thoughtless riots and unbounded profusion.”
And this sighting appeared a few years later: “The government has time and again been called upon, to adopt measures to render our commerce secure, and to prevent the violation of our neutrality.” From the Alexandria (Va.) Gazette & Daily Advertiser, Sept. 7, 1818.
The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary, which we’ve expanded, also has the shorter “time and again” version:
“Application was made, time and again, relative to the College, and no change could be obtained, when it was necessary” (from a Nov. 24, 1820, speech at an 1820-21 constitutional convention in Massachusetts).
The next citation in the OED, an etymological dictionary based on historical evidence, appeared a decade later (note the plural): “It has been recommended, times and again, not to give horses grain unbroken on this account” (New England Farmer, Feb. 23, 1831).
The first Oxford example for the longer version showed up in print four years later, and we haven’t found any earlier ones: “We know that this has been reported of it time and time again” (Baltimore Southern Pioneer and Richmond Gospel Visiter, March 28, 1835).
The shorter version is not only earlier, but it’s apparently more popular. “Time and again” has been the more common form since the usage first appeared in the early 19th century, according to a search in Google’s Ngram viewer, which compares phrases in digitized books.
The OED’s most recent citation is for the original version: “Time and again she had to make difficult decisions about disputed words and phrasing.” From “Towards a Scholarly Edition of Samuel Beckett’s Watt,” an essay by Chris Ackerley in Textual Scholarship and the Material Book (2009), edited by Wim van Mierlo.
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