Oftenly

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 07:54 PM 8/22/2007, you wrote:
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>Subject:      Re: Oftenly
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>
> >A subscriber pointed out that a large number of examples of this form can
> >be found online (and I've found examples in newspapers).
>
>Online, sure, anything can be found on-line ... a lot. "Oftenly"
>seems to be comfortably outnumbered by "fastly".
>
>In the newspapers, sure ... but not so often. N'archive right now
>turns up five examples, four from the 1920's by the same author -- at
>least two of these apparently quoted from a real or fictitious
>Japanese -- and one other from 1930. Of course on another day
>N'archive will give a different result!
>
> >The OED says "Now U.S. regional (rare)", which is clearly outdated.
>
>Maybe not. Maybe it's just as rare now as it was in 1920 ... by some measures.
>
> >Would its reappearance be the result of hypercorrection, or for some
> >other reason?
>
>I suspect it's 'reappeared' (along with "fastly" and other, uh,
>nonstandard items) simply because there's a lot more unedited
>material publicly available (on the Web, etc.) than before, and a lot
>more material 'published' in English by persons who are not very
>familiar with English.
>
>In many cases -- particularly in many of those produced in
>seriousness by native English-speakers -- I suspect it is hypercorrection.
>
>"I blog often, fast, and good!" ... uh, oops, that should be ... uh ....
>
>-- Doug Wilson
>
>
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I blog oftenly, fastly, and goodly?!

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