[ADS-L] "have ever been"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 13, 2006, at 1:27 AM, Ron Butters wrote:

> In a message dated 9/12/06 3:33:35 PM, zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
> writes:
>
>
>> caught in passing on the radio on sunday, a woman talking about her
>> enthusiasm for Star Trek: "I am, and have ever been,..."
>>
>> this struck me as literary/archaic, and the OED agrees with that
>> judgment, treating the relevant uses of "ever" -- 'throughout all
>> time' and 'always' -- as "now arch. or merely literary", with the
>> most recent cites being from 1831 and 1885, respectively.
>>
>
> I remember a drinking song from college (or was it from Boy Scout
> camp?) that
> had the line, "One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so."
> Isn't
> this use of "ever" exactly the same in meaning?" And then there is
> Poe's raven
> who quoth "Never more." But perhaps these are both archaic as well?

this is the idiom "ever more" (usually spelled "evermore", if the OED
is to be believed), which does indeed have the 'always' sense  of
"ever".  but it too is obsolete/archaic.  OED has "evermore" 'for all
future time' up to 1854, "evermore" 'always, at all times,
constantly, continually' to 1850, and "evermore" with negatives to
1842.  all the OED's examples sound archaic to me, like nothing i
would say or write.

the 'always' sense of "ever" does survive in "forever", which is "for
ever" written as one word.  there is also the expanded emphatic
version "forever more", which is current but seems to be attested
mostly in poems and song lyrics.  oddly, this one's not in the OED,
though the OED does have "forevermore" in this sense, and "for
evermore" -- presumably the original of "forever more" -- as well,
but with no cites for either past the 19th century.  and there's also
the expanded emphatic version "forever and ever" (or "for ever and
ever").

in my first posting on "ever" 'always', one of the suggestions i made
was that it was just a shorter variant of "forever".

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org