try and?

[Joan Houston Hall]

DARE's first quote for "try and" is from 1847.

At 03:01 PM 4/17/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Peter Richardson <prichard at LINFIELD.EDU>
>Subject:      try and?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>There must be something in the archives about "try and" as well: "I'll try
>and get to it in the morning." Does anyone know how old the apparent
>substitution of _and_ for _to_ is in this case? Possibly analogous is
>"I'll look and see" = "I'll [take a] look in order to see." Note that we
>can't say "I'll try and [do it]," but that "I'll try to [do it]" is just
>fine: *I'll try and / I'll try to.
>
>Peter R.