Tag: Language

Q: If someone is charging a price we consider unwarranted, we say that’s “highway robbery.” Is highway robbery worse than ordinary robbery? And why do we say “highway robbery” when we are not on a highway, but standing in a supermarket shocked by the price of strawberries?

A: Today “robbery” (the taking of something by force) is worse than “highway robbery” (charging an exorbitant price for something).

If you feel the price of something is “highway robbery,” you usually don’t have to buy it, but you can’t just brush off an armed robber.

However, the expression “highway robbery” was more intimidating when it first appeared in the early 17th century, a time when armed “highwaymen” on horseback preyed upon travelers. Here’s the colorful history of the phrase.

The oldest of these terms, “highway” first appeared as heiweg in the Kentish dialect of early Old English, and meant a public road regarded as being under royal protection, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest OED citation is from a land charter in Latin and Old English, dated around 859, for the sale of property by Ethelmod, an ealdorman or alderman, to a man named Plegred:

“Ab oriente cyniges heiweg. A meritie stret to Scufelingforde” (“From the east, the king’s highway, a street south to Scufelingforde”). From Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, Part 2 (2013), edited by Susan E. Kelly and Nicholas P. Brooks.

The noun “robbery” appeared in Old English writing in the 12th century. The OED’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded here, describes how those who turn away from God are punished:

“Vuele he us briseð. gif he binimeð us ure agte. oðer þurh fur. oðer þurh þiefes. oðer þurh roberie. oðer þurh unrihte dom” (“Wrathfully he crushes us, if he takes away our property, either through fire, either through thieves, either through robbery, either through unjust judgment”).

The first OED example of the phrase “highway robbery” appeared in the early 17th century: “Skulking surprises and vnder-hand stealthes, more neerely resembling high-way robberies, then lawfull battell” (The History of Great Britaine Under the Conquests of Ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans, 1611, by John Speed).

The noun “highwayman” soon showed up in Compters Common-wealth (1617), a play by William Fennor about the inmates of a compter, or debtor’s prison:

“It is this that makes Newmarket heath, and Royston-dounes about Christmas time so full of high-way men that poore Countrie people cannot passe quietly to their Cottages.”

In the late 18th century, English speakers began using “highway robbery” figuratively to mean “blatant and unfair overcharging or swindling; the charging of an exorbitantly high price,” the OED says.

The dictionary’s first citation is from All the World’s a Stage (1777), a farce by the Irish playwright Isaac Jackman: “What, five shillings for a boiled fowl! … This is high-way robbery, without the credit of being robbed.”

The figurative use of a literal expression is common in English, as when you “rock the boat,” “shake a leg,” come to a “dead end,” “put your best foot forward,” or have “a laundry list” of things to do.

Finally, here’s an illustration of a literal highway robbery, done by Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827). The tinted etching (Vicissitudes of the Road in 1787: The Highwayman, Lord Barrymore Stopped) was reproduced in a London weekly, The Graphic, Dec. 6, 1890:

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Q: I often hear the term “tuckered out,” but not in any other tenses. My dictionary says “tucker” is a dress. I’m confused. What does “tuckered out” mean, where did it come from, and what are its other tenses?

A: The story begins back in Anglo-Saxon days, when the verb “tuck” (tucian in Old English) meant to punish, mistreat, or torment.

The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Old English Boethius, a late ninth- or early tenth-century translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae (“The Consolation of Philosophy”), a sixth-century Latin treatise by the Roman philosopher Boethius:

“Lustlice hi woldon lætan þa rican hi tucian æfter hiora agnum willan” (“Gladly would they [the unwise] let the powerful torment them at will”).

The “punish” sense of “tuck” is now obsolete, the OED says, but in the Middle English of the late 14th century, the verb came to mean “to pull or gather up and confine” loose garments—a sense we use now when we “tuck in” our shirttails or “tuck in” a child at bedtime.

The dictionary’s earliest citation for the new meaning is from the story of Dido, the Queen of Carthage, in Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women (circa 1385).

When Dido meets Aeneas and Achates in the wilderness, she asks if they’ve seen her sisters, out hunting “i-tukkid vp with arwis” (“[their skirts] tucked up with arrows”).

This “gather up” meaning of “tuck” apparently led to the use of “tucked up” to describe a tired horse or dog—a sense the OED defines as “having the flanks drawn in from hunger, malnutrition, or fatigue; hence, tired out, exhausted.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded here, describes the wild pariah dog: “They generally are very thin, and of a reddish-brown colour, with sharp-pointed ears, deep chest, and tucked-up flanks” (from The Dog, 1845, by the English veterinary surgeon William Youatt).

Meanwhile, the related verb “tucker” appeared in the US with the sense of “to tire, to weary.” The OED says it’s usually seen in the phrasal verb “tucker out,” especially its past participle “tuckered out,” meaning “worn out, exhausted.”

The earliest example we’ve seen, which uses the present participle (“tuckering”), is from an article in a New York literary journal about a shark hunt:

“There’s no sich thing as tuckering out your raal white shark: he’s all bone and sinners [sinews]” (The Knickerbocker, January 1836).

The earliest example we’ve found for the past participle is from an anonymous short story, “The Book Agent,” in The Rhode-Island Republican (Newport, RI), June 22, 1836:

“ ‘I thank you a thousand times,’ said the stranger, ‘I reckoned to have got to the tavern by sun down, but I havn’t, and as I am prodigiously tuckered out, I’ll stay, and thank ye into the bargain,’ following the clergyman into the house.”

The online Cambridge Dictionary has recent examples of the usage in the present tense (“it tuckers you out”) and in the present perfect (“the puppy has tuckered herself out”).

We haven’t been able to find an example of “tucker” used to mean a dress. However, it’s a now-obsolete term for a strip of gathered or pleated material, like a ruffle or frill, sewn in or around the top of a bodice (the upper part of a dress).

The earliest OED citation, which we’ve expanded here, is from a book about heraldry that defines “tucker” as “a narrow piece of Cloth Plain or Laced, which compasseth the top of a Womans Gown about the Neck part” (The Academy of Armory, 1688, by  Randle Holme).

This sense of “tucker” is seen, especially in British English, in the expression “one’s best bib and tucker,” meaning “one’s smartest clothes.”

In another clothing sense, the noun “tuck” has been used since the 14th century to mean one of several folds stitched into cloth to shorten, decorate, or tighten a garment.

The earliest OED citation is from The Testament of Love (1388), by Thomas Usk: “That no ianglyng may greue the lest tucke of thy hemmes” (“That no jangling [quarreling] may grieve [trouble] the least tuck of thy hems”).

(Usk, an English writer and bureaucrat caught up in the turbulent politics of the late 14th century, wrote the Testament in prison as an appeal for mercy. He was convicted of treason, hanged, and beheaded.)

We’ll end on a more palatable note—the use of “tuck” to mean “eat” or “eat heartily,” a sense that developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, perhaps from the “gather up” sense of the verb or the use of the noun “tuck” for a fishing net, a usage that appeared in the early 17th century.

The OED’s first citation for “tuck” used to mean “consume, swallow (food or drink)” is from Barham Downs (1784), a novel by the English writer Robert Bage: “We will dine together; tuck up a bottle or two of claret.”

The dictionary’s first example for “tuck” in the sense of “feed heartily or greedily; esp. with in, into,” uses the gerund (“tucking”): “Tom Sponge now began cramming unmercifully, exclaiming every three mouthfuls, ‘Rare tucking in, Sir William.’ ”

Finally, the Yorkshire schoolmaster Wackford Squeers uses the phrasal verb “tuck into” in this OED citation from the Dickens novel Nicholas Nickleby (1839): “If you’ll just let little Wackford tuck into something fat, I’ll be obliged to you.”

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A: How did the phrase “no object” come to mean “not something important” or “not an obstacle” in a sentence like “I’d fly first class if money were no object”?

A: The usage was first recorded in the late 18th century in newspaper advertising copy. It’s derived from the much older use of the noun “object” to mean a goal or purpose. Here’s the story.

When the noun first appeared in English in the late 14th century, it meant “something placed before or presented to the eyes or other senses,” but now more generally means “a material thing that can be seen and touched,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from On the Properties of Things, John Trevisa’s translation, sometime before 1398, of De Proprietatibus Rerum, an encyclopedic Latin work by the 13th-century Franciscan scholar Bartholomaeus Anglicus:

“The obiecte of þe yȝe is al þat may ben seyn, and al þat may ben herd is obiect to þe heringe” (“The object of the eye is all that may be seen, and all that may be heard is the object of the hearing”).

The OED says the usage ultimately comes from the classical Latin noun obiectum (something presented to the senses) and past participle obiectus (offered, presented).

In the early 15th century, the English noun came to mean a “goal, purpose, or aim; the end to which effort is directed; the thing sought, aimed at, or striven for,” according to the dictionary.

The first Oxford citation is from Grande Chirurgie, an anonymous Middle English translation, written sometime before 1425, of Chirurgia Magna (1363), a Latin surgical treatise by the French surgeon Guy de Chauliac:

“Euacuacioun for his obiecte only biheld plectoric concourse” (“The object of evacuation only concerns plethoric accumulation”). The passage refers to the evacuation, or draining, of plethoric concourse, excessive accumulation of blood.

So how did “object,” a noun for a goal or purpose, come to mean something important or achievable when used in the negative phrase “no object” (not important or achievable)?

As an explanation, the OED cites a 1931 paper by the lexicographer C. T. Onions, the dictionary’s fourth editor.

In “Distance No Object” (Tract XXXVI, Society for Pure English), Onions says the expression is derived from a formula commonly used in early newspaper advertisements, “in which the word object had its normal meaning of ‘thing aimed at,’ ‘aim.’ ”

Thus, he writes, “the advertiser states directly what is his object or his principal object.”

Later, Onions says, “object” was used in negative constructions meaning something that’s not an aim—“the first step” in its “shift of meaning.”

Finally, he says, the negative construction came to mean something that “will not be taken into consideration by the advertiser, that it will not be regarded as an obstacle, that it will not matter.”

The earliest OED citation for “no object” used this way is from a newspaper ad by a woman seeking a job: “A Gentlewoman … wishes to superintend the family of a single Gentleman or Lady …  and salary will be no object” (Morning Herald, London, May 20, 1782).

The expression soon escaped its advertising origins. We found an example in Management (1799), a comedy by the English playwright Frederick Reynolds.

A character who wants to be an actor says he’ll work for free. When offered money, he replies, “Pha!—money’s no object.”

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Q:  The university where I teach is urging the staff to “lean into” the success of our students. Is this trendy use of “lean” legit? So many suits are employing it that I can hear Bill Withers moaning from the great beyond.

A: The phrasal verb “lean into” is indeed legit and means to embrace or commit to. The usage that’s been around since the mid-20th century, but we know of only two standard dictionaries that have embraced it.

The Oxford Dictionary of English and the New Oxford American Dictionary define “lean into” as “commit fully to or embrace something: lean into kindness and community; they’re keys to serving and connecting you and your neighbours well.”

Both are published by Oxford University Press, which produces the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference that says the usage originated in the US and means “to accept and embrace (an experience); to commit to or fully engage with (a role, task, or undertaking).”

The earliest OED citation is from the Princeton Alumni Weekly (Feb. 10, 1941): “Bill D’Arcy is working for the Coco-Cola Co. in Atlanta, Ga. Kent Cooper is leaning into it at Columbia Business.”

The dictionary’s most recent example is from an article in Corn & Soybean Digest (Sept. 29, 2021) about the need for farmers to speak to their children about the future of their farms: “Sometimes it’s a hard subject to get into for many reasons, but you have to lean into it.”

A similar phrasal verb, “lean in,” appeared in the US in the early 21st century and means “to become fully engaged with something; to commit oneself completely to a role, task, or undertaking, esp. in the face of difficulty or resistance,” according to the OED.

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from an article on interactive storytelling: “Kids are being remade to expect to interact, to lean in and make a difference. They do not want to read or watch passively” (“Psst … Wanna Do a Phrontisterion,” by Thom Gillespie, in Future Courses, 2001, edited by Jason Ohler).

[In case you’re curious, a “phrontisterion” or “phrontistery” is a place for thinking or studying. It comes from the post-classical Latin phrontisterium and the ancient Greek ϕροντιστήριον (“thinking shop”), a term that Aristophanes uses in his comedy Νεφέλαι (The Clouds) to ridicule the school of Socrates.]

You can find the term “lean in” in several dictionaries of American and British English. Merriam-Webster online, for example, defines it as “to persevere in spite of risk or difficulty,” and has this example: “Attending college began as a time of ‘leaning in,’ because it took courage to attend a large campus without much parental support and no friends attending with me.”

The OED notes that “lean in” was “popularized by US business executive Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In (2013), in which she encourages women to challenge traditional gender roles and aspire to leadership in the workplace.”

Finally, you mentioned the American singer-songwriter Bill Withers, who used a much older phrasal verb in his 1972 song “Lean on Me.”

The OED says the use of “lean” with “on,” “upon,” or by itself to mean rely on dates from the Middle English of the 12th century.

The OED’s earliest example, with leonie up on, is from the anonymous Ancrene Riwle, or rules for anchoresses, dating from before 1200. Here’s an expanded version:

“ha understonden þet ha ahen to beon of se hali lif þet al hali chirche, þet is cristene folk, leonie & wreoðie up on ham.”

(“they [the anchoresses] understand that they must live so holy a life that all the holy church, that is, the Christian people, may lean and depend upon them.”)

We’ll end with the chorus from the Bill Withers song “Lean on Me”:

Lean on me
When you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend,
I’ll help you carry on
For it won’t be long
Till I’m gonna need
Somebody to lean on.

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Q: In “The Dig,” a movie set in England in the 1930s, the characters express gratitude by saying, “Thank you kindly,” and concern for the lady of the manor by asking, “Is she doing poorly?” Are these usages dated?

A: These expressions sound old-fashioned to us too, but they’re still in use and have had somewhat of a revival lately.

“Thank you kindly” first appeared in Middle English in the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines “to thank kindly and variants” as “to thank (someone) very much; (also) to thank politely.”

The dictionary’s earliest example is from an anonymous interlude, or light theatrical work: “Now I thanke you both full kindly” (An Enterlude of Welth, and Helth, Very Mery and Full of Pastyme, first performed in the mid-1550s).

The most recent OED citation is from the Daily Mail (London, Oct. 14, 2002):  “Bernstein … offered me a job as a documentary producer. I thanked him kindly but indicated that my ambitions lay in other directions.”

A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books, shows that the expression began falling out of favor in the late 19th century but had a comeback in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

When the verb “thank” first appeared in Old English as þancian or ðoncian, it meant “to give thanks.” The runic letters þ, or thorn, and ð, or eth, were pronounced as “th.”

In this early OED example, ðoncade is the past tense of þancian: “genimmende calic ðoncunco dyde vel ðoncade & sealde him” (“taking the cup, he gave thanks and gave it to them”). From Matthew 26:27 in the Lindisfarne Gospels.

As for “poorly,” it first appeared in Middle English as povreliche, an adverb meaning “inadequately, imperfectly, unsatisfactorily.” The earliest Oxford citation is from Ancrene Riwle (also known as Ancrene Wisse), an anonymous guide for monastic women, written sometime before 1200:

“Ant tah min entente beo to beten ham her-inne, ich hit do se povreliche, ant sunegi in othre dei-hwamliche seoththen ich wes nest i-schriven” (“And though my intent is to atone for them [sins] in this, I do it so poorly and sin in other [matters] daily since I was last confessed”).

We’ve expanded the example above and used a more recently edited version of the manuscript. The OED’s passage is from The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962), edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Ripley Ker. Ours is from Ancrene Wisse (2000), edited by Robert Hasenfratz.

The form of the word you’re asking about, the adjective “poorly,” meant “unwell, in ill health” when it first showed up in the 16th century, the OED says. The dictionary describes the usage as “chiefly British,” but all four standard American dictionaries we regularly consult recognize it.

The first Oxford citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a farming guide, written in verse, that refers to the health of cattle:

“From Christmas, till May be wel entered in, / Al cattel wax faint, and looke poorely and thin” (from A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandry, 1570, by the English poet-farmer Thomas Tusser).

The earliest OED example for “poorly” used to describe human health is from The Witch, a tragicomedy written in the early 17th century by the English playwright Thomas Middleton: “Why shak’st thy head soe? and look’st so pale, and poorely?”

The dictionary’s most recent citation is from Paper Faces (1991), a children’s novel by the English author Rachel Anderson: “Children couldn’t go into the children’s ward unless they themselves were poorly.”

A search for “feel poorly” in Ngram Viewer indicates that this use of “poorly” fell out of favor in the 20th century, but has come back somewhat in the 21st.

A final note: Thomas Tusser, the author of the farming guide mentioned above, coined an early version of the proverb “a fool and his money are soon parted.”

In an expanded version of his guide, Fiue Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1573), Tusser has these lines: “A foole and his monie be soone at debate, / which after with sorrow repents him too late.”

A version closer to the usual wording soon appeared in A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande (1587), by John Bridges: “a foole and his money is soone parted.”

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Q: How did the word “card” end up in expressions like “play the race card” and “play the gender card”?

A: The “card” in those expressions ultimately comes from the use of the word in card playing. Think of it as a metaphorical use of a valuable playing card, like an ace that completes a royal flush in poker.

Middle English borrowed the word “card” from Middle French, where the plural cartes referred to a game of cards, as in jouer aux cartes (to play cards).

When the English term first appeared in the 15th century, it was also used in the plural to mean such a game. The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the “Code of Laws” for the town of Walsall in the West Midlands of England.

A statute, believed written around 1422, sets penalties for “plaiyng at eny unlawefull games,” including “dyce, tables [backgammon], cardes.” (From A History of Walsall and Its Neighbourhood, 1887, edited by Frederic W. Willmore.)

The noun soon came to be used for the cards themselves. The term “cardes for pleiyng” appears in a 1463-64 law prohibiting the importation of playing cards. (From The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, edited by Chris Given-Wilson in 2005.)

A century later, the OED says, “card” took on “various figurative uses arising from card games, esp. denoting something that may be useful in obtaining one’s objective, or a person who can be called upon to support one’s case.”

The dictionary says the noun was used “chiefly with modifying adjective, as good, safe, strong, etc.” The first OED citation uses “sure card” to mean someone or something “that can be relied on to attain an intended end” or success:

“Nowe thys is a sure carde, nowe I maye well saye That a cowarde crakinge here I dyd fynde.” (From Thersytes, an anonymous play, sometimes attributed to Nicholas Udall, first published in the early 1560s. Thersytes was a Greek warrior slain by Achilles for mocking him.)

In the 19th century, according to Oxford citations, the noun when used with a “modifying adjective (as knowing, rum, etc.)” took on the sense of “a person (esp. a man) regarded as having the specified character or quality.”

The earliest citation is from a short piece by Dickens that was originally published as “Scenes and Characters, No. 4, Making a Night of It” in the magazine Bell’s Life in London (Oct. 18, 1835) and later as “Making a Night of It” in Sketches by Boz (1836):

“But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be considered as a ‘knowing card,’ a ‘fast-goer,’ and so forth, conducted himself in a very different manner.” We’ve expanded the citation.

Two decades later, the OED says, “card” by itself took on the sense of “an ingenious, clever, or audacious person.”

The earliest example cited is in Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1853): “You know what a card Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter.”

In the early 20th century, according to OED citations, the term took on the sense of “an odd or eccentric person, esp. one in whom these qualities are regarded as entertaining or comical; a joker.”

The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from “His Worship the Goosedriver,” a short story by the English author Arnold Bennett in Tales of the Five Towns (1905):

“It would be an immense, an unparalleled farce; a wonder, a topic for years, the crown of his reputation as a card.” In the story, a jokester buys 12 geese and 2 ganders from a gooseherd and tries to herd them to his home. The geese have other plans!

Finally we come to the usage you ask about. Like the use of “card” for a person, this one also emerged in the first half of the 19th century.

The OED says “to play the —— card” means “to introduce a specified issue or topic in the hope of gaining sympathy or political advantage, by appealing to the sentiments or prejudices of one’s audience.”

In the dictionary’s first citation, the word “card” precedes the hot topic: “The Tories will doubtless play the card of ‘Irish misgovernment’ against Ministers” (The Scotsman, June 1, 1839).

The next Oxford example reverses the order in referring to “Liberal friends in Ulster, who wish to play the land purchase card at the elections” (The Times, London, May 22, 1885).

The next citation uses “Orange card” in the sense of an appeal to Northern Irish Protestants:

“I decided some time ago that if the G.O.M. [Grand Old Man, a reference to Gladstone] went for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play” (from a letter written Feb. 16, 1886, by Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s father).

The earliest Oxford example of “race card” uses it to mean an appeal to anti-Black voters: “the Tory leadership declined to play the race card” (The Observer, March 3, 1974).

The OED doesn’t have an example of  “gender card,” but Merriam-Webster online says it showed up in the US more than a dozen years later.

M-W cites an analysis by Gary Orren, a professor of public policy at Harvard, about the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Evelyn Murphy, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts:

“But Orren thinks if Murphy plays the gender card in her ads she will lose the broader coalition of votes needed to win the election” (The Boston Globe, Aug. 9,1990).

The OED says “play the race card” and similar expressions can now be “depreciative, and chiefly used in accusations of others,” when they mean “to exploit one’s membership of a specified minority or marginalized group as a means of gaining sympathy or an unfair advantage.”

A recent Oxford example cites a Black soldier who appeared in recruitment posters and was “attacked on social media by white colleagues for ‘playing the race card’ to secure career advancement” (Morning Star, London, Sept. 25, 2020).

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Q: I’ve seen “becoming ever-more Prussian” and “studied the ever more frequent engravings.” For me the hyphen is incorrect in the first example, but admissible in the second because of the determiner “the.” What are your thoughts?

A: The short answer is that the modifying phrase “ever more,” meaning “increasingly more,” now needs no hyphen in either of those examples, though the usage was sometimes hyphenated in the past.

Taking a closer look, the adverbs “ever” + “more” form a phrase that modifies an adjective (“Prussian” … “frequent”). The result is an adjectival phrase: “ever more Prussian” … “ever more frequent.” The first is a post-modifying complement; the second pre-modifies a noun.

Note that no hyphens are used in these examples from  the Collins English Dictionary: “He grew ever more fierce in his demands” … “He was deluged by ever more plaintive epistles from his devoted admirer” … “It will become ever more complex.”

The presence or absence of a determiner like “an,” “the,” “some,” etc., is irrelevant, as in this example from the Oxford English Dictionary:

“In an ever more brutal, if technically sleek, world where the skies are filled with killer drones” (New York Magazine, Nov. 2, 2015).

A similar usage combines the adverbs “ever” + “so” to modify an adjective, resulting in an adjectival phrase. Here the sense of the adverbial modifier is “extremely” or “very.”

Merriam-Webster online has these examples: “I’m ever so glad that you got better” … “In the back seat was a Chinese American woman looking ever so chic and glamorous.”

Getting back to “ever more,” it’s also used by itself to modify a noun, as in “ever more Prussians” … “ever more engravings.” In this case, “more” is an adjective, and “ever more” is an adjectival phrase. A pair of examples found in the Oxford English Dictionary: “ever more gadgets in hand” … “ever more artists.”

No hyphens there either. But with an adjective other than “more,” that type of “ever” phrase usually has a hyphen. Some examples from the Cambridge Dictionary: “ever-decreasing profits” … “ever-increasing demand” … “an ever-present threat.”

(We should add that “ever more” and “ever so” can also be used with adverbs, resulting in adverbial phrases: “the price fell ever more steeply” … “he ran ever so quietly.”)

As for the term “evermore” (one word, no hyphen), it means “forever” or “always.” This example is from Merriam-Webster: “he promised to love her evermore, if only she would consent to be his wife.”

When “evermore,” the oldest of these terms, first appeared in Old English as æfre ma, it meant “for all future time,” according to the OED.

We’ve expanded the dictionary’s earliest citation, which is from King Alfred’s late ninth-century translation of Liber Regulae Pastoralis (Pastoral Care), a sixth-century Latin treatise by Pope Gregory:

Gif hwelc wif forlæt hiere ceorl, & nimð hire oderne, wenestu recce he hire æfre ma, ode mæg hio æfre eft cuman to him swa clænu swa hio ær was?

(If a wife leaves her husband and takes another man for herself, do you think her husband will evermore consider her, or can she ever return to him as pure as she e’er was?)

The earliest written use of the phrase “ever more,” as far as we can tell, is from Middle English, where it’s hyphenated. Here’s the OED citation:

“Pitous and Iust, and ever-more y-liche, Sooth of his word, benigne and honurable” (“Compassionate and just, and ever more constant, True to his word, kind and honorable”). From “The Squire’s Tale,” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (circa 1386).

And we found this early unhyphenated example: “Praye God that he will wyte [keep you] safe to worke fayth ī thyne herte / or else shalt thou remayne ever more faythelesse.” From William Tyndale’s A Compendious Introduccion, Prologe or Preface vn to the Pistle off Paul to the Romayns (1526).

And this is the earliest use we’ve found for “ever more” used adjectivally to modify a noun: “there is ever more paine in keeping, then in getting of mony.” From the essays of Montaigne, translated from French by John Florio (1613).

We’ll end with the early use of “ever so” to mean “very” or “extremely” or, in the words of the OED, “in any conceivable degree.”

The dictionary cites a Nov. 5, 1686, letter by Gilbert Burnet, a Scottish historian and Anglican bishop of Salisbury, written from Florence during a trip to Italy:

“When it hath rained ever so little … the Carts go deep, and are hardly drawn” (from An Account of What Seemed Most Remarkable in Travelling Through Switzerland, Italy, Some Parts of Germany, &c. in the Years 1685 and 1686, by Burnet, published in 1687).

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Q: I’m accustomed to seeing “as such” refer back to a specific word or phrase. Lately, I’ve noticed it where the referent is unspecified or absent. Example: “He broke his leg, and as such he missed work.” I’m curious about the history of this term and its changing usage.

A: Yes, “as such” traditionally refers to a word or phrase already mentioned. But the referent is often obscure in a colloquial use of “as such” that’s almost as old as the original.

Traditionally, “as such” means “in itself” (intelligence as such won’t make you rich), “in that capacity” (a judge as such deserves respect), or “in its exact meaning” (she wasn’t a vegetarian as such).

However, the phrase has been used colloquially for three centuries to mean “consequently,” “subsequently,” or “thereupon,” a usage that’s not recognized by standard dictionaries.

The principal definition of “as such” in the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference based on historical evidence, is “as being what the name or description implies; in that capacity.”

The earliest example in the OED is from an essay by Richard Steele in The Spectator (April 17, 1711): “When she observed Will. irrevocably her Slave, she began to use him as such.”

(An earlier, longer version of the phrase, “as it is such” or “as they are such,” appeared in The History of England, 1670, by John Milton: “True fortitude glories not in the feats of War, as they are such, but as they serve to end War soonest by a victorious Peace.”)

The colloquial sense of “as such” was first recorded a decade after the phrase appeared in The Spectator. As the OED explains, the original sense “passes contextually into: ‘Accordingly, consequently, thereupon.’ ” The dictionary describes the usage as “colloquial or informal.”

The first colloquial Oxford citation, which we’ve edited and expanded, is from a Feb. 25, 1721, entry in the church warden’s accounts for a parish in Salisbury, England:

“he [the curate] had chosen the said William Clemens to be his parish Clerk … And bid the Congregation to take notice thereof and accept him—as such Witness Henry Biggs, F. Barber [and others].” From Churchwardens’ Accounts of S. Edmund & S. Thomas, Sarum (1896), edited by Henry James Fowle Swayne.

The next two Oxford citations are from letters written in England in the early 1800s and published in The Correspondence of William Fowler of Winterton, in the County of Lincoln (1907), edited by Joseph Thomas Fowler:

“I very much longed to hear from you … and as such I did not the least esteem it for its having been delayed for the reasons assigned” (from an 1800 letter by John King).

“H. R. H. Princess Augusta … motioned for me to come to her Highness. As such she addressed me in the most pleasant manner possible” (from an 1814 letter by William Fowler).

Although “as such” in those colloquial examples doesn’t refer to a specific word or phrase mentioned previously, it does concern an earlier occurrence or situation. But as we’ve said, the colloquial usage isn’t recognized by standard dictionaries. And we find it vague and sometimes confusing.

We’ll end with the noun “as-suchness,” a derivative of “as such” that’s defined in the OED as the “absolute existence or possession of qualities, independently of all other things whatever.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from A Pluralistic Universe (1909), by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. In this passage, the “it” at the beginning refers to “Bradley’s Absolute,” the British philosopher F. H. Bradley’s concept of ultimate reality:

“It is us, and all other appearances, but none of us as such, for in it we are all ‘transmuted,’ and its own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether.”

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