[Ads-l] "Till death do we part"

Charles C Doyle cdoyle at UGA.EDU
Fri Jan 22 15:52:55 UTC 2016


Also, "till death we do part" gets several hundred Google hits.

--Charlie

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 1:17 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "Till death do we part"

---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      "Till death do we part"
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Back in the '50's, this was the semiliterate, oddly hypercorrected, last
line of an otherwise excellent, rhythm-and-blues love-song of sixty years
ago. Everyone knows that the phrase is "... till death do _us_ part,"
archaic phraseology for "... till death parts us."


Somehow, this ancient error now appears in an NYT headline:

"Platonic, Until Death Do _We_ Part"

https://goo.gl/oCZxDk

Who had any idea that the bruz were not wrong, but, rather, were merely
ahead of the curve?

Youneverknow.

--
-Wilson
-----
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

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



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