Another fun find from Twitter in its death throes, this time from novelist and screenwriter Michael Marshall Smith @ememess:
Yo, fellow word nerds: fantastically interesting thing that I didn’t know, and you might not either:
That's a screen shot of something posted by a person named Hal Sawyer two years earlier, which says,
My favorite relic English still used everywhere is the word "the" used in phrases like: "the more I look at this, the stranger it seems", or "the bigger they come, the harder they fall". This "the" is not the article of any noun, it is a different word, a conjunction descended from the old English "þā", pronounced "tha" which means either "when" or "then". Back in early Middle English the structure "if – then" had not taken over and if you wanted to express an if – then relationship you said þā whatever, þā whatever", meaning "when such-and-such, then such-and-such". "þā" sounds almost the same as "the" and the spelling of the two converged, but the meaning remained totally different. "the more, the merrier" literally means "when more, then merrier" or "if more, then merrier"; same as centuries ago.
I don't know who Hal Sawyer is, or where this came from. I see one place that says it was a YouTube comment. This English language and usage site backs up his description.
2 comments:
The multiple parts of speech of a, an, and the make my head spin.
I’m not sure the tweeted explanation is right: Merriam-Webster identifies the in “the more, the better” constructions as an adverb, “Middle English from Old English thȳ by that, instrumental of thæt that.” Etymonline says that the adverbial use “is a relic of Old English þy, the instrumentive case of the neuter demonstrative (see that).” But I am afraid to look down this rabbit hole without extra flashlight batteries.
I confess I didn't look into this very far, beyond the one site that I found. I didn't even go to my usual favorite, etymonline! But even the general idea that there are different "the"s in any sense is enough to break my brain just a bit.
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