[Ads-l] United States is/are

[Stephen Goranson]

Rather than a punctiliar event, might the change be attributed, at least in
part, to American English becoming more distinct from British verb usage?

On Sun, May 24, 2026 at 1:26 AM Ben Zimmer <
00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> I was similarly intrigued by Shelby Foote's claim and wrote about it in
> these two pieces:
>
> "Life in these, uh, this United States," Language Log, Nov. 24, 2005
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002663.html
>
> "The United States Is... Or Are?," Word Routes, Visual Thesaurus, July 3,
> 2009
> https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-united-states-is-or-are/
>
> As I wrote there, Foote echoed a number of earlier assertions going at
> least as far back as 1887:
>
> ---
> Washington Post, Apr. 24, 1887, p. 4
> There was a time a few years ago when the United States was spoken of in
> the plural number. Men said "the United States are" -- "the United States
> have" -- "the United States were." But the war changed all that. Along the
> line of fire from the Chesapeake to Sabine Pass was settled forever the
> question of grammar. Not Wells, or Green, or Lindley Murray decided it, but
> the sabers of Sheridan, the muskets of Sherman, the artillery of Grant. ...
> The surrender of Mr. Davis and Gen. Lee meant a transition from the plural
> to the singular.
> ---
>
> --bgz
>
>
> On Sat, May 23, 2026 at 10:44 PM Bill Mullins <amcombill at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I spent last week driving to some of the Virigina Civil War battlefields
> > with my son, who is a big history buff.  While driving I listened to
> Shelby
> > Foote outtakes from Ken Burns' The Civil War, in which he read the
> > following passage from the third volume of his history of the conflict
> > (published in 1974):
> >
> > "This new unity was best defined, perhaps, by the change in number of a
> > simple verb. In formal as in common speech, abroad as well as on this
> side
> > of its oceans, once the nation emerged from the crucible of that war,
> “the
> > United States are” became “the United States is.” "
> >
> > I've heard this claim, that the Civil War was the point in history that
> > the United States went from "are" to "is", before.  Is this the first
> place
> > it is made?  I've not been able to come up with a search strategy to
> > confirm or deny it that doesn't have far too many false positives.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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