by the each

[Benjamin Barrett]

It seems odd to me.

It could even come from a failure to change the settings on the label printer properly. For example, it said, "By the dozen" and the operator changes just "dozen" to "each." (And the operator might even judge by analogy that "by the each" is correct groceryese and set it that way without ever having actually heard the formulation.)

The first hit on Google is http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/grammarlogs3/grammarlogs403.htm, which dates it to 14 September 2000.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/videos

On Jan 31, 2014, at 9:37 AM, Jeff Prucher <jprucher at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I wonder if this is a regionalism? It doesn't strike me as being an unusual usage at all (although I can understand why people unfamiliar with it find it grammatically puzzling).
>
> It looks like DARE might have this as "each, by the": http://www.daredictionary.com/view/dare/ID_00017331?rskey=jDFGnI&result=2&q=each, but I don't have institutional access and can't check the print edition at the moment.
>
> Jeff Prucher
>
>
>
>
>> On Friday, January 31, 2014 4:46 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      by the each
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> on my blog:
>>  http://arnoldzwicky.org/2014/01/31/by-the-each/
>>
>> arnold

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