"Away" > "way"

[Wilson Gray]

So, "aways" goes back a ways, "aways" perhaps being respelled as "a
ways" somewhere along the way.

I remember when "far and away" was far and away more commonly used
than "by far." Or maybe I don't. ;-)

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 11:25 PM, Randy Alexander
<strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Away" > "way"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org