920. Once you start thinking about it, it's weird that we have both "a" and "an." It gets even weirder from there! Plus, modern loneliness, and its solutions, are quite different from what they were when the word was first coined. We look at the history of this formerly rare word.
920. Once you start thinking about it, it's weird that we have both "a" and "an." It gets even weirder from there! Plus, modern loneliness, and its solutions, are quite different from what they were when the word was first coined. We look at the history of this formerly rare word.
The segment on "a" versus "an" was written by Neal Whitman, an independent writer and consultant specializing in language and grammar and a member of the Reynoldsburg, Ohio, school board. You can search for him by name on Facebook, or find him on his blog at literalminded.wordpress.com.
The segment on the word "loneliness" was written by by Amelia Worsley, an Assistant Professor of English, Amherst College. It was originally published in The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license.
| Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/a-an-loneliness/transcript
| Subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates.
| Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.
| HOST: Mignon Fogarty
| WRITER: Mignon Fogarty
| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475) or https://sayhi.chat/grammargirl
| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.
| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.
| Grammar Girl Social Media Links: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon.
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. This week, we’ll talk about why we have both the word “a” and the word “an” and a whole bunch of other weird old pronouns, and about how the word “lonely” used to mean something different from what it means today.
Last week, I talked about how words such as “adder,” “apron,” and “umpire” originally began with the letter “n,” which was lost when phrases such as “a nadder,” “a napron,” and “a noumpere” were rebracketed as “an adder,” “an apron,” and “an umpire.” I also talked about how nouns such as “nickname” and “notch” originally didn’t begin with “n,” but gained one when phrases such as “an ekename” and “an otch” were rebracketed into “a nickname” and “a notch.” All these changes were possible because the indefinite article has two forms: “a” and “an.”
In addition to these common nouns, I talked about how some proper nouns such as “Ned” and “Nell” were created when the affectionate phrases “mine Ed” and “mine Ellen” underwent a similar rebracketing.
If you go back a step though, you start to wonder why we have these alternative forms, “a” and “an,” and “my” and “mine,” that led to the rebracketings. And why do we still say, for example, “an apple” instead of “a apple,” when we don’t say “mine apple” instead of “my apple”?
Of the two forms of the indefinite article, “an” is the older one. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it comes from the Old English word for “one,” which was pronounced something like “on.” However, when the word wasn’t stressed, the “ah” vowel was shortened, so that “an” was pronounced more or less as “un,” as it still is today (when we’re not talking about it as a word, like I am here) [“un apple”]. Unlike today though, “an” was used before words beginning with vowels and words beginning with consonants. The form “a,” which is what we now use before consonant sounds, came about as a phonetic simplification: Without the “n” right next to a consonant at the beginning of a word, pronunciation is easier.
The Oxford English Dictionary says that the loss of “n” happened over the course of three centuries, starting in the 12th century. The change was so thorough that it even happened before words beginning with a vowel. In other words, for a while, speakers were saying “a apple” instead of “an apple” before things settled down into the situation of Standard English today. Some people still do use “a” even before vowels, but these days, it’s regarded as nonstandard.
[Now] Just as “a” developed from the older form, “an,” the forms “my” and “thy” developed from the older forms “mine” and “thine.” “Mine” started losing its final “n” before a consonant at about the same time as “an” did, in the 12th century. In the following century, so did “thine.”
But for whatever reason, even though we still have the two forms “a” and “an,” the forms “mine” and “thine” as possessive pronouns have fallen by the wayside. The Oxford English Dictionary has examples of “my” and “thy” coming before words that began with a vowel in the early 15th century [such as “Lift up thy eyes to heaven’ “Lift vp thy iyen to heuen”], and they had finally taken over as the standard forms by the end of the 1700s. Or at least, “my” did. “Thy” did somewhat, only to be replaced by “your” later, which we’ll probably talk about sometime in the next month or two.
There are a few exceptions in which “mine” is still used as a possessive pronoun, though. You’ll sometimes find it in poetry or song lyrics; for example, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” written in 1861, begins with the line “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Notice that “eyes” begins with a vowel. Also, if you want to put the possessive pronoun after a noun for stylistic effect, you’ll use “mine.” Walt Disney did this in the movie Dumbo, in the song “Baby Mine.”
But before “mine” and “thine” fell out of favor, they were enough of a team that they made some ripples in the pond for the rest of the possessive pronouns. That final “n” for “mine” and “thine” was enough of a recognizable pattern that a process of analogy kicked in, and people started putting a final “n” on the other possessives, giving us “hisn,” “hern,” “ourn,” “yourn,” and “theirn.” According to the American Heritage Dictionary, these final-“n” forms date back to Middle English, but exist these days only as regional forms. As far as I know, there was never an “itsn” form of “its,” but that’s not surprising, since “its” only joined the ranks of possessive pronouns at the beginning of the Modern English period. Before then, speakers just used “his.”
While forms such as “ourn” and “yourn” were created in midland and southern England by analogy with “mine” and “thine,” in northern England a different analogy was going on. The possessive pronouns “her,” “our,” “your,” and “their” were gaining an “s” at the end instead of an “n,” by analogy with the possessive form for singular nouns and proper nouns, such as “Squiggly’s.” This possessive pattern, plus the fact that “his” already ended in “s,” made it easy for most of the rest of the possessive pronouns to gain a form ending in “s.” These, of course, are our familiar and now-standard words “hers,” “ours,” “yours,” and “theirs.”
Furthermore, once “thee,” “thou,” “thy,” and “thine” fell out of use, “mine” was the only remaining possessive pronoun ending in “n.” “Mine,” “yours,” “his,” “hers,” “its,” “ours,” “theirs”—one of these things is not like the others. With such an obvious exception, it was almost inevitable that the forces of analogy would complete the job and add an “s” to “mine” to produce “mines.” The Oxford English Dictionary has this form in Scottish English from the 17th century, and in Irish English and Caribbean English from the 20th century. The American Heritage Dictionary notes that “mines” is also associated with African American Vernacular English.
Actually, I’m curious why “mines” didn’t become standard along with all the other “s”-ending possessive pronouns, but that’s language for you. Even now, the system of possessive pronouns is a little unpredictable!
That segment was written by Neal Whitman, an independent writer and consultant specializing in language and grammar and a member of the Reynoldsburg, Ohio, school board. You can search for him by name on Facebook, or find him on his blog at literalminded.wordpress.com.
This next segment is by Amelia Worsley, an Assistant Professor of English, Amherst College.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says the most common pathology he saw during his years of service “was not heart disease or diabetes; it was loneliness.”
Chronic loneliness, some say, is like “smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” It “kills more people than obesity.”
Because loneliness is now considered a public health issue – and even an epidemic – people are exploring its causes and trying to find solutions.
While writing a book on the history of how poets wrote about loneliness in the Romantic Period, I discovered that loneliness is a relatively new concept and once had an easy cure. However, as the concept’s meaning has transformed, finding solutions has become harder.
Returning to the origins of the word — and understanding how its meaning has changed through time — gives us a new way to think about modern loneliness, and the ways in which we might address it.
Although loneliness may seem like a timeless, universal experience, it seems to have originated in the late 16th century, when it signaled the danger created by being too far from other people.
In early modern Britain, to stray too far from society was to surrender the protections it provided. Distant forests and mountains inspired fear, and a lonely space was a place in which you might meet someone who could do you harm, with no one else around to help.
In order to frighten their congregations out of sin, sermon writers asked people to imagine themselves in “lonelinesses” — places like hell, the grave, or the desert.
Yet well into the 17th century, the words “loneliness” and “lonely” rarely appeared in writing. In 1674, the naturalist John Ray compiled a glossary of infrequently used words. He included “loneliness” in his list, defining it as a term used to describe places and people “far from neighbours.”
John Milton’s 1667 epic poem “Paradise Lost” features one of the first lonely characters in all of British literature: Satan. On his journey to the garden of Eden to tempt Eve, Satan [is said to] tread “lonely steps” out of hell. But Milton isn’t writing about Satan’s feelings; instead, he’s emphasizing that he’s crossing into the ultimate wilderness, a space between hell and Eden where no angel has previously ventured.
Satan describes his loneliness in terms of vulnerability: “From them I go / This uncouth errand sole, and one for all / Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread / Th’ unfounded deep.”
Even if we now enjoy the wilderness as a place of adventure and pleasure, the fear of loneliness persists. The problem has simply moved into our cities.
Many are trying to solve it by bringing people physically closer to their neighbors. Studies point to a spike in the number of people who live alone and the breakdown of family and community structures.
Former British Prime Minister Theresa May set her sights on “combating” loneliness and appointed a minister of loneliness to do just that in January 2018. There is even a philanthropy called the “Campaign to End Loneliness.”
But the drive to cure loneliness oversimplifies its modern meaning.
In the 17th century, when loneliness was usually relegated to the space outside the city, solving it was easy. It merely required a return to society.
However, loneliness has since moved inward — and has become much harder to cure. Because it’s taken up residence inside minds, even the minds of people living in bustling cities, it can’t always be solved by company.
Modern loneliness isn’t just about being physically removed from other people. Instead, it’s an emotional state of feeling apart from others – without necessarily being so.
Someone surrounded by people, or even accompanied by friends or a lover, can complain of feelings of loneliness. The wilderness is now inside of us.
The lack of an obvious cure to loneliness is part of the reason why it is considered to be so dangerous today: The abstraction is frightening.
Counterintuitively, however, the secret to dealing with modern loneliness might lie not in trying to make it disappear but in finding ways to dwell within its abstractions, talk through its contradictions and seek out others who feel the same way.
While it’s certainly important to pay attention to the structures that have led people (especially elderly, disabled, and other vulnerable people) to be physically isolated and therefore unwell, finding ways to destigmatize loneliness is also crucial.
Acknowledging that loneliness is a profoundly human and sometimes uncurable experience rather than a mere pathology might allow people – especially lonely people – to find commonality.
In order to look at the “epidemic of loneliness” as more than just an “epidemic of isolation,” it’s important to consider why the spaces of different people’s minds might feel like wildernesses in the first place.
Everyone experiences loneliness differently, and many find it difficult to describe. As the novelist Joseph Conrad wrote, “Who knows what true loneliness is — not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask.” Learning about the range of ways others experience loneliness could help mitigate the kind of disorientation Conrad describes.
Reading literature can also make the mind feel like less of a wilderness. The books we read need not themselves be about loneliness, though there are lots of examples of these, from “Frankenstein” to “Invisible Man.” Reading allows readers to connect with characters who might also be lonely; but more importantly, it offers a way to make the mind feel as though it is populated.
Literature also offers examples of how to be lonely together. British Romantic poets often copied each other’s loneliness and found it productive and fulfilling.
There are opportunities for community in loneliness when we share it, whether in face-to-face interactions or through text. Though loneliness can be debilitating, it has come a long way from its origins as a synonym for isolation.
As the poet Ocean Vuong wrote, “loneliness is still time spent with the world.”
That segment was written by Amelia Worsley, an Assistant Professor of English, Amherst College. It was originally published in The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license.
Next, I have a familect story from Chris.
"Hi my name is Chris Bacon and I have a familect story, and this is an expression that my grandmother would say, and then, and then my father would say it and now me and my sisters say it. The phrase is in reference to when you had a really good meal, and you're full, and my grandmother would say ‘my sufficiency has been sufonsified,’ and I tried looking this up, and I can't even find the words sufonsified anywhere, but I just think it's a great for you and I just I love saying it, and now my husband is saying it too, and I hope you enjoyed the story. Thank you so much. Bye bye."
Thanks, Chris. Your grandmother sounds like a kick. How creative.
If you want to share the story of your familect, a family dialect or a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL. Call from a nice quiet place, and we might play it on the show.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to our audio engineer Nathan Semes, and our editor, Adam Cecil. Our marketing associate is Davina Tomlin, and our digital operations specialist is Holly Hutchings, who would like to travel to Croatia, especially for the beaches. Our ad operations specialist is Morgan Christianson, and our intern is Kamryn Lacy.
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.