"of a TIMESPAN"

[Bill Palmer]

Not common to me, Wilson.  It struck me as  picturesque, and *possibly* a
little archaic, but, again, just a personal impression.


Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 10:24 AM
Subject: Re: "of a TIMESPAN"


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> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "of a TIMESPAN"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> But, isn't simple "of a morning," by itself, common?
>
> "I love the smell of napalm _of a morning_."
>
> Of course, that's not what he said. But had he put it that way, it
> wouldn't have struck as being, in any way, distinctive.
>
> -Wilson
> â?"â?"â?"
> 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 Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 6:24 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "of a TIMESPAN"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Mar 8, 2009, at 11:10 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:
>>
>>> Here's another North Carolinaism, or at least I've never heard it
>>> anywhere
>>> else, and in fact I've only heard it once there.
>>>
>>> "early of a morning". Â In the sense of "early in the morning". Â e.g.
>>> "I
>>> enjoy sitting outside, early of a morning."
>>>
>>> Speaker was an early 80ish woman from north central NC (Vance County).
>>> Don't know if it was unique to her idiolect, or in general use in
>>> that area.
>>
>> i'd expect this to be found scattered over english dialects (UK and
>> US), esp. in rural, non-standard, and older speakers. Â it's a survival
>> from earliest english -- subentry 51a for "of" in the OED Online ('at
>> some time during, in the course of, on') -- with cites of things like
>> "of a Thursday", "of an evening", "of a night", etc. over about 1700
>> years.
>>
>> arnold
>>
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