"all of the sudden"

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

Fwiw, we may deal here originally with a blend: "all of a sudden" + "out of the blue." I suppose there are other possibilities too.

Gerald Cohen

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Message from Ron Butters,  Fri 9/26/2008 2:55 PM

Have we discussed "all of the sudden" vs. "all of a sudden" here before? I thought that "all of the sudden" was a Southernism, but Charles Krauthammer used "all of the sudden" in a recent column (published in the Raleigh News and Observer).

Is he from the South?

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