"Away" > "way"

[Randy Alexander]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 11:27 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
> On Feb 3, 2009, at 6:51 AM, Larry Horn wrote:
>
>>> Oddly, I'd expect to encounter "aways better" ("a ways better"?) more
>> than "away better".  But since neither is in my own actual
>> repertoire, I may be mistaken.
>
> a stunning number of google hits for {"aways better"}, but most of
> them seem to be spellings of "always better".  some, however, are
> pretty clearly intended to be the adverbial modifier.
>
> the OED has an entry for adverbial "aways" ("away" + adverbial
> genitive "-s"), marked as obsolete.  but apparently it lives.  either
> a survival, in the spoken language, that went unrecorded for ca. 300
> years or a fresh extension of -s in the vernacular.
>

There's also the adverb phrase "far and away".  COCA gives one hit
each for "far and away superior" and "far and away weaker"

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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