Re: [ADS-L] "I'll see you on tomo rrow"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jul 8, 2006, at 8:43 AM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> One can of course say, "I'll see you on the morrow," though it
> sounds rather
> stilted and archaic. I've nevder checked the etymology of TOMORROW
> -- always
> assumed it was a contraction of "the morrow" (with the voiced
> fricative
> becoming a stop as it does so frequently in English dialects, and
> with the stop also
> becoming voiceless--a little harder to explain, I suppose).

actually (from the OED), the preposition "to" (in a sense 'at (a
time), on (a day)' that is now only dialectal) plus a noun cognate
with gm. Morgen 'morning', so parallel to an old word "to-morn", also
occurring in the form "morrow" (which also had the 'morning' sense
before the 'on the next day' sense).

arnold

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