Fwd: Hyphens: Death-Knell. Or Death Knell (NY Times)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 10/10/07, David Bergdahl <dlbrgdhl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anymore, I notice "any more" written as a single word when it means
> "nowadays" but two words when it means "no longer," a use I find
> increasingly rare.  I think "positive anymore" is driving "negative any
> more" out of existence.  Or, at least that's what it seems in Athens, which
> one daughter once claimed was situated "between Appalachia and the Midwest."

On the page below you'll find a chart comparing US/UK usage of open
vs. closed "any( )more", along with "some( )day", "under( )way",
"some( )time", etc., as reflected by the Oxford English Corpus:

http://www.askoxford.com/oec/mainpage/oec03/

Obviously this doesn't distinguish the various possible contexts where
"any( )more" can appear, but I think the US predilection for the
closed form is too large to be ascribed simply to "positive anymore"
usage (though that no doubt plays a contributing role).


--Ben Zimmer

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