"Till Death Do They Part"?

[Jonathan Lighter]

What's wrong with "till"?  Dictionaries love it.

JL

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 9:31 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Till Death Do They Part"?
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> I don't think I could say "'til [not "till"!] death do them part"
> nohow.  But I might be able to say "'til death do part them".
>
> Joel
>
> At 7/16/2010 09:23 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >Larry, I heard the same phrase used by a non-journalist on the news a
> couple
> >of years ago with absolutely no irony detectable.  Something like, "They
> >said their vows and till death do they part."
> >
> >Some Inglish speakers presumably can't handle the syntax and
> >semi-rationalize what to them is a frozen idiom meaning roughly, "we/they
> >will be together till one dies."
> >
> >Kind of like the Inglish phrase, "Suffer the little children," reported
> here
> >some time ago, interpreted to mean "The little children are suffering" or
> >even "Sometimes even little children must suffer."
> >
> >
> >
> >JL
> >
> >On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 9:08 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >wrote:
> >
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> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > > Subject:      "Till Death Do They Part"?
> > >
> > >
> >
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> > >
> > > I take it this is another for the "Woe am/is I" file.  At least I've
> > > always assumed that the line in the (old-style) standard wedding
> > > ceremony (from the Book of Common Prayer, perhaps?) involves the
> > > pronoun as the object, not the subject, of "do...part":
> > >
> > > "To have and to hold, from this day forward; for better, for worse;
> > > for richer, for poorer; in sickness and health; to love and cherish,
> > > till death us do part"
> > >
> > > or maybe
> > >
> > > "...till death do us part" (so suggests wikipedia).  Either way, it's
> > > "us" and not "we", the latter of which would make no sense
> > > whatsoever--until we part death?  So when the Times Magazine story on
> > > cryogenics  last Sunday (I'm just getting around to recycling it) was
> > > entitled "Till Death Do They Part", I couldn't make sense of that
> > > either.  Granted, it's a play on the wedding vows, with the funky
> > > word order and all, and the idea is, well, let's let the subtitle
> > > tell it:
> > >
> > > The men who want to be cryonically preserved, and the women who
> > > sometimes find it hard to be married to them.
> > >
> > > It's about "the hostile wife phenomenon", as the "cryonicists" see
> > > it.  OK, difference of opinion, I get that.  Creates rift in the
> > > marriage before he kicks the frozen bucket, I get that too.  So it's
> > > still a case of death parting the couple, only now it's before they
> > > become, what's the expression, metabolically discordant, right?  But
> > > I still don't get why it's not "Till Death Do Them Part", in the
> > > headline and the Contents page, rather than "Till Death Do They
> > > Part".  Am I missing something?
> > >
> > > LH
> > >
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