hopefully

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Apr 4, 2012, at 10:47 PM, W Brewer wrote:

> … Herr Hoffmann (of Jazzmusik fame) also taught us that this englisch use
> of <hopefully> was borrowed from German <hoeffentlich>, part of the war
> booty from WW2.

??
what's the Hoffmann reference?

yes, German does indeed have sentence-adverbial (speaker-oriented) "hoffentlich", but there's absolutely no reason to think that English "hopefully" is a calque on it.  speaker-oriented adverbs in -ly have a long history in English; "hopefully" fits into the pattern, so it's no surprise that it got used this away every so often over recent centuries.  it is true that this "hopefully" didn't take off until the mid-20th century (and then mostly in the u.s.), but then the spread of usages is sometimes inscrutable.

speaker-oriented "thankfully" has a very similar history, including the spread in the mid-20th century (and the disfavor from some usage critics).

arnold

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