"a-loose"

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 3, 2004, at 10:50 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "a-loose"
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> At 11:50 PM -0400 7/30/04, Wilson Gray wrote [re "unthaw"]:
>>
>>> I've not only heard it, but I also use it. Your story reminds me of
>>> the Vermont-born buddy of mine who informed me that there's no such
>>> word as "a-loose," after tiring of hearing me use it. I was stunned
>>> to
>>> see that WC agreed with him, since I've used "a-loose" since about 30
>>> seconds after I learned to talk. However, vengeance was mine. A
>>> couple
>>> of hours later, as we were watching a college football game, we heard
>>> the color man say something like, "Did you see the way that Smith
>>> broke a-loose after Jones tried to tackle him?!"
>
> I wonder if "a-loose" here is an adjectival derivative of "unloose",
> the redundant un-verb alternant of "loose(n)".  This verb has been
> attested for centuries, as the OED indicates, although it was never
> accepted as a "real word" by prescriptivists who objected to the
> apparent illogicality of the fact that while "untighten" is the
> opposite of "tighten", "unloose(n)" is (predictably) a synonym of
> "loosen".  (Just as with "unfreeze"/"freeze"/"unthaw"/"thaw"; as I
> mentioned yesterday, there is a sound semantic motivation for these
> asymmetries.)
>
> Here is George Campbell's manifesto of 1776:
> ================
> The verb to unloose should analogically signify to tie, in like
> manner as to untie signifies to loose.  To what purpose is it, then,
> to retain a term, without any necessity, in a signification the
> reverse of that to which its etymology manifestly suggests?...All
> considerations of analogy, propriety, perspicuity, unite in
> persuading us to repudiate this preposterous application altogether.
> [_Philosophy of Rhetoric_, 1776: 335-36]
> ================
> Fortunately, we Americans were declaring our independence at about
> the same time, precisely to  unloose ourselves from such tyrannical
> strictures.
>
> Larry

And we did, of course, succeed in breaking a-loose from those
tyrannical strictures.;-)

-Wilson

>