"Away" > "way"

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Feb 3, 2009, at 6:38 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> There's a TV commercial, only a local one, I think, in which the
> voiceover woman makes the claim that something is
>
> "_away_"
>
> better than something else.
>
> I've long had the feeling that, once upon a time, this use of "away"
> was standard and _'way_ in this use was considered to be, at best a
> colloquialism. This is occurrence of "away" in the commercial is the
> only indication that I've had, in the past many, many years, that this
> feeling may be based on what was once reality.
>
> Anyone else?

well, the OED traces adverbial "way" back to "away" ("aphetic" is the
word it uses).  and it marks this particular use (in the sense 'far,
much') as U.S.

arnold

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