wide array of death euphemisms

[Baker, John]

Bethany,

        I was unaware until your post that there is a prescriptivist position that "to no end," which I had supposed to be a well-established idiom meaning "without limit," is merely a bastardization of "no end."  But there it is on The Vocabula Review, http://www.vocabula.com/2004/VRJune04Fiske.asp.  Is there any basis or support for this, other than the pronouncement in Ask Fiske?

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Bethany K. Dumas
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2004 6:47 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: wide array of death euphemisms

"to no end"?

Let's test on idioms as well as punctuation. I.e., "By the way, does '[bothers
me] to no end' mean
[bothers] without purpose'?" [quoted from Vocabula]

Or was that last century?

Bethany