"It's _away_ better than fast food! It's Wendy's!" [NT}

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Jul 21, 2009, at 9:16 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "It's _away_ better than fast food! It's Wendy's!" [NT}
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a re-play from a little while back:

Sender: American Dialect Society   2/3/09
Poster: Arnold Zwicky
Subject: Re: "Away" > "way"

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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