This week / Next Week, Anymore <-> Nowadays
Guy Letourneau
guy1656 at OPUSNET.COM
Thu Jul 30 13:37:15 UTC 2009
I am in my mid-40s, grew up in New England, and use 'this week' and
'next' week to cover a two-week span of the future.
I live in Oregon now but spent 3yrs in the 1990s in Indiana, which was
the first time I noticed someone beginning a clause or sentence with
'anymore,' where my mind would have used 'nowadays.'
Personally I use 'anymore' at the end of a clause whan I am describing a
condition which prevailed or obtained in the past but is no longer current:
"You can't get chlordane at the hardware store anymore. Nowadays the
damn greenie-weenies have banned all the good stuff that used to work.
You can't get your shirts white anymore, they lowered the phosphates too
much. Luckily I bought about 50 pounds of trisodium phosphate to add
that back in, a teaspoon per wash load, but nowadays its even getting
hard to get real TSP - they try to fob you off with sodium bicarbonate."
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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