all of the sudden, one at the time, still in the bed

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 6, 2006, at 8:14 AM, Ron Butters wrote:

> I suggested earlier that ALL OF THE SUDDEN is a USA Southernism.

yes, but that seems extraordinarily unlikely, given the spread of the
cites.  at least if "Southernism" is taken in its strong sense,
meaning 'primarily found in the South'.
>

> ...That is just anecdotal evidence, as is my observation that I
> first began
> noticing this usage when I moved to North Carolina in 1967 (from
> Iowa) and assumed
> it was a dialect thing,

well, that could be a fact about you rather than about the usage.  i
didn't recall having noticed it until last week myself, and the
original querier had first noticed it in delaware (after having lived
for some years in charlotte, n.c.) and so thought it might be a
philadelphia/delaware valley thing.   you both are generalizing from
your first conscious experience of the expression, and that
generalization is very likely to be mistaken.

it is just possible that it's a "weak Southernism" -- a very
widespread item that nevertheless is especially frequent in the
South.  (does anyone else make a distinction between a weak Xism and
a strng Xism, for some region or social group X?)

> just like ONE AT THE TIME (which I began also to hear
> here in NC in 1967),

despite all kinds of junk, i got four instances in the first hundred
hits for <"one at the time">.  and then a bunch more when i specified
the verb.  of these nine cites, one was from here at stanford, two
were canadian, two were from advice about manners ("speak one at the
time"), and two were physicists (with lightpaths and photons arriving
"one at the time"), and one was a spanish researcher writing in the
Oxford journal Human Reproduction.

i very much doubt that this is a strong Southernism.

> ... I have a vague memory that these alternative uses of the
> definite article
> have been commented on in print (American Speech? Dialect Notes?
> DARE? Mencken?).

i was hoping this was so.  not an easy thing to search for, though.

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