[Ads-l] United States is/are

Sun May 24 23:05:31 UTC 2026

Has anyone ever written "this United States"?

DanG

On Sun, May 24, 2026, 8:07 AM dave at wilton.net <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

>
> I did a couple of searches of the Corpus of Historical American English
> and found the singular/plural ratio was around 1.3:1 until the 1870s. So
> the singular was a bit more common prior to the Civil War. Then there was a
> jump in the 1870s when it went to around 2:1 in favor of the singular.
> There was another jump in the in the 1920s, when the ratio topped 4:1.
>
> There could be any number of reasons for the shifts. The one in the 1870s
> could plausibly have been caused by changing ideas of nationhood. The one
> in the 1920s is more curious to my mind. Perhaps a standardization of
> editorial practices among the sources the corpus draws upon was the cause,
> but that's a SWAG (sophisticated wild-ass guess).
>
> The numbers are:
>
> Decade   Plural/Sing Raw #    Ratio
> 1820s     21/25      1.19
>  1830s     62/81      1.30
>  1840s     33/51      1.54
>  1850s     45/46      1.02
>  1860s     59/77      1.30
>  1870s     25/46      1.84
>  1880s     51/103    2.02
>  1890s     58/114    1.96
>  1900s     38/110    2.89
>  1910s     71/158    2.22
>  1920s     57/246    4.32
>  1930s     42/212    5.05
>  1940s     52/261    5.02
>  1950s     53/288    5.43
>  1960s     43/271    6.30
>  1970s     36/188    5.20
>  1980s     29/139    4.79
>  1990s     32/127    3.97
>  2000s     35/152    4.34
>  2010s     32/105    3.28
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Shapiro, Fred" <00001ac016895344-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2026 7:20am
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] United States is/are
>
>
>
> As I mentioned in a 2024 posting, there has been much discussion for over
> a century of when the term "United States" became singular rather than
> plural. I can't speak knowledgably about when overall usage shifted, but I
> can contribute what may be the earliest known example of singularization:
>
> 1781 Alexander Spotswood Letter to Virginia Delegates 19 Aug. (Founders
> Online)
>
> By the inclosed certificate you will observe, that the united states is
> indebted to Mr. Edward Simpson.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Ben
> Zimmer <00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2026 1:25 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: United States is/are
>
> 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
>
> https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fitre.cis.upenn.edu%2F~myl%2Flanguagelog%2Farchives%2F002663.html&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7Caf9435bc88d949fae0ae08deb954f86f%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C639151971779178304%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=tmeQepNFnbm4RbfWr4WsOfUnMJXSbrt38FhHxgl%2BWtI%3D&reserved=0
> <http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002663.html>
>
> "The United States Is... Or Are?," Word Routes, Visual Thesaurus, July 3,
> 2009
>
> https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.visualthesaurus.com%2Fcm%2Fwordroutes%2Fthe-united-states-is-or-are%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7Caf9435bc88d949fae0ae08deb954f86f%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C639151971779197559%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Eo5FlzJrsFb76SRJedaW5Q1qMcsJ34UXVt4pGSZpsBo%3D&reserved=0
> <
> 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.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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