hopefully

[Shapiro, Fred]

I traced the origins of sentence-adverbial "hopefully" in the following two articles:

A Study in Computer-Assisted Lexicology: Evidence on the Emergence of Hopefully as a Sentence Adverb from the JSTOR Journal Archive and Other Electronic Resources
American Speech, Vol. 73, No. 3 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 279-296

Earlier Computer-Assisted Evidence on the Emergence of Hopefully as a Sentence Adverb
American Speech, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 439-441

I found that the usage so opposed by prescriptivists went back, not just "for decades," but for centuries.  The earliest example I was able to retrieve was by Cotton Mather (!) in 1702.  Sentence-adverbial "hopefully" comes so naturally to speakers of English that it was present for over 250 years before anyone noticed it.

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Laurence Horn [laurence.horn at YALE.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 8:40 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: hopefully

Which, curiously enough, neither that professor nor anyone else would likely have used that sentence to express, anymore that they would say "Happily, the sun is shining" to mean that the sun is happy about shining.  "Hopefully" is a sentence adverb in such contexts and has been used as such for decades--while also being a manner adverb in "The dog is sitting hopefully by her food dish".  (Not arguing with Lisa here, but with her long-ago professor and my fellow Usage Panelists who vote with the majority to condemn this perfectly ordinary and proper usage.)

LH

On Apr 4, 2012, at 8:14 PM, Lisa Galvin wrote:

> Or, that the sun, filled with hope, will rise.
>
> Or something.
>
> Lisa Galvin
> Seattle
>
> On Apr 4, 2012, at 5:09 PM, Lisa Galvin <lisagal23 at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Lisa Galvin <lisagal23 at HOTMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: hopefully
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I don't know about replacing "hopefully" with one word, but I had a professor long ago that would have said the proper usage in this sentence would be "I hope" rather than "hopefully".
>>
>> To say hopefully the sun will rise tomorrow is (according to this interpretation) to say that the sun itself is full of hope that it will rise tomorrow.
>>
>> Lisa Galvin
>> Seattle
>>
>> On Apr 4, 2012, at 4:21 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>> Subject:      Re: hopefully
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> On Apr 4, 2012, at 6:59 PM, Dan Nussbaum wrote:
>>>
>>>> In the sentence, "Hopefully, the sun will rise tomorrow" the word hopefully is being used incorrectly. What word should be used?
>>>>
>>> To elaborate a bit, the usage claim in the first sentence is incorrect; there's nothing incorrect about the use of "Hopefully" in the example.  Unless, of course, the speaker/writer would prefer that the sun not rise tomorrow but is convinced this wish will not be satisfied, in which case "Hopefully" would be the wrong word choice, and perhaps "Unfortunately" could be used instead.
>>>
>>> LH
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org