Word Musings for this Sunday Afternoon

house.gabe@gmail.com — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:42:00 GMT

I was thinking about the word alot...

"Oh, Gabe," you're probably thinking, "surely you meant wordssssss. A lot is the indefinite article and the word lot. That's two words, innit?"

Well... at least, I hope that's somewhere in the ballpark of what you were thinking. But yes, technically, you're right. Alot should be a lot. Or should it?

I see—and use—alot, well... a lot. And, in the grand tradition of Fence-Sitting Gabe, I'm... well, fence-sitting on this one. But my particular fence-sitting has rules behind it, or at the very least, it's predictable. And easy.

If a lot is within a sentence ["I know a lot of boys!"], then I separate it, and I feel it should be separated. But when it's a stand-alone word, usually used to emphasis, then a single word will do ["I fall in love. Alot!"]. Make sense?

But really, I don't understand people's resistance to the single-word alot. Sure, it's deceptively close to the verb allot, and we already see the makings of a lot/allot confusions in the same vein as they're/their/there and its ilk, which means that alot/allot will happen a lot more. But we can suffer through that, can't we? Gives us one more thing to shake our heads ashamedly at, right? Still, it's a natural progression in our language to fuse a and lot together into a single word. Don't believe me? Then I'll give you another word...

There.

I did it.

Did you miss it?

No, of course you didn't.

Another used to be an other. Actually, some people say there may have been a time when it was a nother. Charles Dickens uses a nother in Great Expectations several times. The "current" a whole nother idiom is not so current at all, really. But regardless, the point stands: An other merged into another. A lot will merge into alot. It's only a matter of time. I think there are a lot of two-part words like a lot and its ilk that are slowly becoming one word. And why not? A lot is really talking about one thing, just a lot of that one thing, but when you're thinking about it, you're really thinking about the lot that you grouped together, and you're thinking about it as a single entity... just... a lot of them. Oh, you know what I mean!

So when you read that poor n00b's reply and he uses alot a lot, maybe we should consider him, not an idiot, but rather ahead of his time.

Oh, that's an other one! (^_o)

Discourse and Desires

Word Musings for this Sunday Afternoon