"all the faster'

[Jonathan Lighter]

This is how prescriptivism works. At an impressionable age you're told sternly how bad a feature is. Then - if you're one of the few in English class actually paying attention - you can go through life feeling quietly superior to those who hadn't gotten the word.

Thank you, Alison, for your brave - if terribly misguided - stand.

JL



sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: sagehen
Subject: Re: "all the faster'
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>OED seems not to include this common spoken construction - no surprise,
>since I was told in junior high English that it was at least as revolting
>as "irregardless" and must never be spoken or written on pain of lofty
>disdain.
>
>I doubt that this ex. is particularly early, but it's a start:
>
>1935 Doyle Laird & Wallace Smith _Bordertown_ (film) : Is this all the
>faster this Model T will go?
>
>In other words, "as fast as."
>
>How would one describe or account for the underlying grammar here ? Is
>there a syntactician in the house ? (Goak.)
>
>JL
~~~~~~~~

This doesn't really seem objectionable to me. It assumes, reasonably, that
there is a limit to the speed that the Model T can obtain, and is asking
where in the remaining range above the present speed it is now; has it
exhausted that range?. "How much faster can it go?" in other words.
A. Murie

~@:> ~@:> ~@:> ~@:>


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