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

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:51 AM -0700 7/21/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Jul 21, 2009, at 10:11 AM, Scot LaFaive wrote:
>
>>
>>I've always heard it as "way better"...now I'll have to give it a
>>better
>>listen.
>
>well, "way better" is *hugely* more frequent than "away better",
>especially if you exclude instances of "far and away".  even then,
>there are a fair number of irrelevancies.  but there are some clear
>examples.
>
>so if you're going to listen for "away better", you're going to have
>to listen very carefully.
>
>of course, it's not just "better", but other comparatives: "way bigger
>than", "away nicer than", and no doubt others.  there are many
>irrelevancies, but still there are some clear examples.
>
>i have no idea whether some of these are survivals of the older
>variant, or whether they are all strengthenings of the construction
>with "way" (perhaps encouraged by "far and away").
>
It might be relevant that there are >8000 g-hits for "aways better"
and a bunch more for "a ways better", most of which at a glance
appear relevant (i.e. with the quoted element as a constituent),
although a good number seem to be variants of "always better" rather
than "(a)way better".


LH

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