Category: Grammar

Q: I saw this headline over an NPR article: “VP Vance tries to progress Gaza ceasefire.” Is that a permissible use of “progress”? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it used like that, but I’m slow to pick up on the evolution of English.

A: That usage is somewhat controversial. The verb “progress,” used in that particular way, is frowned upon by standard American dictionaries but is acceptable in British English.

We’ve written about the uses of “progress” as a verb in two of our previous posts—in 2010 and again in 2022.

The 2022 post discusses “progress” as an intransitive verb (one without an object) meaning simply to go forward, as in “the construction progressed.” This use is not unusual.

English borrowed the word “progress” from Latin, where progressus referred to a forward movement, an advance, or a development. It appeared as a noun in the 15th century and a verb in the 16th.

We cite many examples from the Oxford English Dictionary as we show how the verb progressed over the years. We especially like this one from Shakespeare’s King John, believed written in the mid-1590s:

“Let me wipe off this honourable dewe, / That siluerly doth progresse on thy cheekes.”

Our 2010 post discusses “progress” in the sense you ask about—as a transitive verb (i.e., one that takes a direct object and means to move something forward), as in “the builder progressed the construction.”

In that post, we answer a question about a transitive use by Sarah Palin in 2008, the year she ran for vice president as the Republican nominee: “Let’s talk about progressing this nation.”

As we mentioned, this transitive use is not recognized in American English dictionaries, including American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, and Webster’s New World.

However, the OED (an etymological dictionary), and the latest editions of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage include the transitive use. And so do standard British dictionaries like Cambridge, Collins, and Longman.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Q: My daughter and I were watching a DVD of the 1942 Disney film Bambi when I thought of this question: Is the verb “fawn” (to show affection or flatter) related to the noun “fawn” (a young deer)?

A: No, the words aren’t related. The verb comes from the Old English fægnian or fægenian (to rejoice or applaud) while the noun comes from the Old French faon or feon (a young animal).

In Old English, fægnian meant “to be delighted or glad, rejoice,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In Middle English, the verb (spelled fayne, faine, fawn, etc.) took on its affectionate and flattering senses.

The earliest OED citation for the verb, which we’ve expanded here, is from an Old English translation of  De Consolatione Philosophiae, a sixth-century Latin treatise by the Roman philosopher Boethius:

“Ne sceal he na be hræ þor to ungemetlice fægnian ðæs folces worda” (“He must not fawn [rejoice] too immoderately at the people’s words”).

When the affectionate/flattering sense appeared in Middle English, the OED says, it originally referred to the efforts of an animal, especially a dog, “to show delight or fondness (by wagging the tail, whining, etc.).”

In its first recorded use, the dictionary says, the verb is implied in the gerund (“fawning”). The citation, from the anonymous Ancrene Riwle, or rules for anchoresses, dates from sometime before 1200.

This passage offers advice on how to respond to the “fawning” (uawenunge) of the Devil, who is referred to earlier as “Þene helle dogge” (“the hell hound”):

“Spet him amidde þe bearde to hoker ⁊ to schom, þet flikereð so mit þe, ⁊  fikeð mid dogge uawenunge” (“Spit on him amid the beard to scorn and to shame him, the one who so flatters thee and woos with doglike fawning”).

The first OED citation for the verb used explicitly in the sense of to show affection or flatter is from Piers Plowman (B text, 1377), an allegorical poem by William Langland.

In this passage, which we’ve expanded, wild animals are said to submit before the innocence and righteousness of saints and martyrs:

Ac þere ne was lyoun ne leopart þat on laundes wenten,
Noyther bere, ne bor ne other best wilde,
Þat ne fel to her feet and fauned with þe tailles.

(But there was no lion nor leopard that went on lands,
Neither bear, nor boar, nor other wild beast,
That did not fall at their feet and fawn with their tails.)

By the early 14th century, the verb was also being used in reference to human behavior, a sense the OED defines as “to affect a servile fondness; to court favour or notice by an abject demeanour.”

In this sense, “fawn” or “fawning” is often seen in constructions with “on,” “over,” and “upon.”

In the earliest citation, the dictionary says, the verb is implied. The passage, written around 1325, comes from a homily that warns against the temptations of the world, and refers to “fleishshes faunyng” (“fawning upon the flesh”):

“Fyth of other ne he fleo, that fleishshes faunyng furst foreode” (“He need not flee the assault of any other, who first withstood fawning upon the flesh”). From “Middelerd for Mon Wes Mad” (“Middle Earth for Man Was Made”), in The Harley Lyrics (4th edition, 1968), edited by George Leslie Brook.

The OED’s first explicit citation for human fawning is from a Middle English version of a treatise purportedly written by Aristotle for his pupil Alexander the Great. We’ve expanded it here:

“Smothe afore folk to fawnyn and to shyne, / And shewe two facys in Oon hood” (“Smooth [flattering] before people, to fawn and to shine, / And show two faces under one hood”).

The passage is from John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh’s Secrees of Old Philisoffres: A Version of the Secreta Secretorum (circa 1440), a translation from the Latin. Scholars believe Secreta Secretorum originated in Arabic in the 10th century, long after Aristotle (384–322 BC), and was translated into Latin in the 12th century.

After all the philosophical and theological examples above, we’ll end on a lighter note. In our “fawn” research, we came across this headline from the Aug. 14, 2025, issue of the Lodi News-Sentinel in Lodi, CA:

“Lost and fawned: Abandoned deer rescued by Lodi Animal Services.”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Q: I saw this sentence the other day in Two Faced Murder, a 1946 mystery by Jean Leslie: “The professor is yclept Peter, and I hate to have him called Pete.” What’s with “yclept” here?

A: The word “yclept” is an old adjective that means named, called, or by the name of. So “the professor is yclept Peter” is an old-fashioned way of saying the professor is named Peter.

The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, labels “yclept” archaic, but several standard dictionaries include  it without a label—that is, as standard English.

Merriam-Webster online, for example, says the adjective may be old, “but it’s still got some presence in the living language.” M-W says “yclept appears (usually in playful contexts) in phrases like ‘We ventured to a pub, yclept Ye Olde Watering Hole.’ ”

The Old English ancestor of “yclept” was geclypod, past participle or participial adjective of the verb clypian, “to cry, call; to call on, appeal to (a person), for or after (a thing),” according to the OED.

Ultimately, these words are derived from kom (beside, near, by, with), a prehistoric base that’s been reconstructed by linguists, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

The earliest OED citation for the verb, which we’ve expanded here, is from a ninth-century Old English gloss, or translation, of the eighth-century Latin in the Vespasian Psalter. In this passage, cleopiu is the first person singular of clypian.

“dryhten gehereð me ðnne ic cleopiu to him” (“the Lord hears me when I call to him”). The Old English gloss was written between the lines of the Latin psalms.

The first Oxford citation for the participial adjective (spelled gicliopad) is from a manuscript, written around 1000, that contains an early Latin-Old English version of the Christian liturgy conducted at the Cathedral Church of Durham. Here we’ll translate both the Latin and the Old English:

“Dignus vocari apostolus” (“worthy to be called an apostle”), “wyrðe þætte ic se gicliopad erendwraca” (“may I be worthy to be called a messenger”). From Rituale Ecclesiae Dunelmensis (1840), edited by Joseph Stevenson.

In Old and Middle English, the prefixes “ge-,” “i-,” and “y-” were used to form past participles and participial adjectives. In the example above, “gi-” is apparently a scribe’s variant spelling of “ge-.”

This “i-” example in the OED, which we’ve expanded, is from The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, an account of early British history written in Middle English sometime before 1300:

“Al þis was ȝwile icluped þe march of walis” (“All this was once called the March of Wales”). Oxford notes that in other scribal versions of the passage the term was written “ycleped, icleped, clepud, callyde, callyd.”

The dictionary’s earliest “y-” example is from Arthour & Merlin, an anonymous Middle English romance written around 1330: “Her ost was ycleped Blaire” (“Her host was called Blaire”).

The usage was common in Middle English, the dictionary says, but it was considered “a literary archaism” by the early Modern English of Elizabethan times and was “often used for the sake of quaintness or with serio-comic intention.”

The OED cites Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598), where Shakespeare uses “ycliped” comically in a letter from the long-winded Spaniard Don Adriano de Armado to Ferdinand, King of Navarre.

In explaining how he caught the fool Costard consorting with a country girl, Jaquenetta, in the king’s park, supposedly for men only, Armado writes, “Now for the ground Which? which I meane I walkt vpon, it is ycliped Thy Park.”

The word “yclept” in its various spellings was rarely seen in the 16th and 17th centuries, but had a burst of popularity in the 18th and 19th before falling out of favor in the 20th, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which tracks words and phrases in digitized books.

Although it’s not common now, “yclept” does appear every once in a while. In the Jean Leslie novel you noticed, Two Faced Murder, Professor Peter Ponsonby and his fiancée, Mara Mallery, are asked to search for a missing faculty wife. Maura uses “yclept” in introducing Peter to another faculty member.

We’ll end with a more recent appearance, one we especially like. Here’s the opening of “My Man Bertie,” a review by Christopher Buckley of Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013), by Sebastia Faulks:

“What, ho? A new Jeeves and Wooster novel? Steady on. Your faithful reviewer may not be the brightest bulb in the old marquee, but dash it, isn’t this anno dom 2013, and didn’t ‘the Master’—yclept Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (‘Plum’ to his chums)—shove off across the old Rio Styx back in 1975?”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Q: I recently wrote to you about the use of “which” as a conjunction. Well, “but” is now being used as a relative pronoun. This is from a Consumer Cellular television ad: “If you want a smart phone with lots of bells and whistles but won’t break the bank, we’ve got that, too.”

A: We haven’t noticed a significant increase in the use of “but” as a relative pronoun, but such a phenomenon wouldn’t surprise us. The word “but” has been used as a relative for hundreds of years.

We’ll discuss the TV ad later (it’s nonstandard English, by the way). But first let’s look at the history of “but” as a relative pronoun meaning “who … not,” “that … not,” or “which … not”—a usage that dates back to the early 15th century in English writing.

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Troyyes Book (circa 1420), John Lydgate’s translation from the Latin of Historia Destructionis Troiae (1287), by Guido delle Colonne:

“Þer nas … Nat left a man withInne Troye toun Þat able was to stonden in bataille … but þei comen oute” (“there was … not left a man in Troy town able to stand in battle … but they came out [i.e., that did not come out]”).

As the OED explains, “but” here means “that … not” and is used in a subordinate clause before a pronoun that refers back to the subject or object of the main clause.

The dictionary also includes a similar usage with the pronoun unexpressed, so “but acts as a negative relative: that … not, who … not (e.g. Not a man but felt this terror, i.e. there was not a man who did not feel this terror, they all felt this terror).”

We wrote a post in 2020 that explains this similar use of “but” as a relative pronoun.]

Oxford cites this example from The Three Kings’ Sons (circa 1500), an anonymous Middle English translation of a French romance by David Aubert, edited in 1895 by Frederick James Furnivall:

“There be none othir there that knowe me, but wold be glad to wite me do wele” (“There be none other there that know me, but would be glad [i.e., that would not be glad] to see me do well”).

[Note: On Jan. 28, 2025, a reader sent in this example from Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (circa 1594): “There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend.”]

The OED describes this use of “but”as obsolete or archaic, but modern standard dictionaries, which reflect contemporary usage, still recognize the use of “but” to mean “who … not,”  “that … not,” or “which … not.”

Both Collins and Webster’s New World give this example: “Not a man but felt it.” Merriam-Webster cites Mistress Quickly in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor (circa 1597): “nobody but has his fault.”

American Heritage has this example: “There never is a tax law presented but someone will oppose it.” It also has an example for “but” used to mean simply “that,” a usage described as informal: “There is no doubt but right will prevail.”

As you’ve probably noticed, the use of “but” to mean “that … not” is similar to its use as a preposition meaning “with the exception of,” as in “none but the brave deserves the fair” (from John Dryden’s 1697 ode “Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music”).

Finally, let’s discuss the TV ad that got your attention: “If you want a smart phone with lots of bells and whistles but won’t break the bank, we’ve got that, too.”

We haven’t seen the ad or found any dictionary or usage guide that recognizes this nonstandard sense of “but.”

More to the point, the sentence would be clunky even if “but” were replaced by “that.” We’d rewrite it this way, with “but” as a conjunction: “If you want a smart phone that has lots of bells and whistles but won’t break the bank, we’ve got that, too.”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Q: I’m curious about the use of “even” here: “Bill knows it’s the right thing to do. Even Tom knows it’s the right thing to do.” It seems that “even” suggests our expectations for Tom are lower than for Bill. How does “even” do that?

A: The adverb “even” here indicates a special or exceptional instance of a more typical one. In your examples, “Bill knows it’s the right thing to do” is the typical occurrence, and “Even Tom knows it’s the right thing to do” is the special one.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “even” is used as an adverb “to convey that what is being referred to is an extreme case in comparison with a weaker or more general one which is stated or implied in the adjacent context.”

The earliest OED example of “even” used this way is from The Obedience of a Christen Man (1528), by the Protestant biblical translator and reformer William Tyndale:

 “All secretes knowe they [the Roman Catholic hierarchy], even the very thoughtes of mennes hertes.” Tyndale is apparently referring to secrets heard in the confessional.

(Tyndale’s book is said to have influenced Henry VIII’s decision in 1534 to break with Rome and become the supreme head of the Church of England. Tyndale, arrested in the Netherlands, was executed for heresy in 1536.)

The dictionary’s most recent citation for “even” used in the special sense is from Time Out New York (Jan. 18, 2007): “Even the newest New Yorker knows that the furthest eastern border of Greenwich Village is Fourth Avenue.”

Although English is believed to have inherited “even” from prehistoric Germanic, the OED says, the use of the term for an exceptional occurrence “is not attested in other Germanic languages.”

When “even” was first recorded in Old English it was an adjective, emn, meaning “level, smooth, uniform,” according to the OED. It appears in the dictionary’s first citation as emnum, the dative (or indirect object) form of emn:

“Seo burg wæs getimbred an fildum lande & on swiþe emnum” (“The city was built in a field and on very level ground”). From the Old English Orosius, a late 9th- or early 10th-century translation from the Latin of Paulus Orosius’s Historiarum Adversum Pagano Libri VII (Seven Books of History Against the Pagans).

When the adverb “even” showed up in Old English as efnast, the OED says, it similarly meant “steadily, smoothly; uniformly, regularly.” The first citation is from Psalm 118:77 in the Paris Psalter:

“Me is metegung on modsefan, hu ic æ þine efnast healde” (“For me a modest mind is how I faithfully [i.e., regularly] keep your commandments”).

The adverb still has those senses today, but how did it come to describe something special—in other words, something that’s odd as well as something that’s even?

The OED says the usage is “a natural development” from a now-obsolete Old English use of “even” (spelled efne) to introduce, among other things, “a qualifying circumstance,” with the sense of “namely,” “that is to say,” or “truly.”

The dictionary’s earliest citation is from Guthlac B, an Old English poem about the death of St. Guthlac of Croyland, a hermit in the Anglian Kingdom of Mercia. The poem is based on Vita Sancti Guthlaci (Life of Guthlac), an 8th-century Latin work by Felix of Crowland, an East Anglian monk:

“He fyrngewyrht fyllan sceolde þurh deaðes cyme, domes hleotan, efne þæs ilcan þe ussa yldran fyrn frecne onfengon” (“He must accept his fate to gain glory through the coming of death, even [that is to say] the same fate our parents of old accepted”).

Although the OED traces the use of “even” to introduce an exceptional occurrence to that Old English usage, the dictionary notes that the exceptional sense of the adverb “seems not to have arisen before the 16th cent., and took time to become fully established.”

If you’d like to read more, we wrote posts in 2017 and 2020 that discuss some of the other senses of the word “even.”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Q: I have a question about how suffixes are chosen. Specifically, why did the noun/verb “impact” turn into an adjective by adding “-ful” instead of “-ive”?

A: You’ll be surprised to hear that both “impactive” and “impactful” can be found in standard dictionaries.

Merriam-Webster, for example, defines “impactive” as “having an impact or marked effect,” and “impactful” as “having a forceful impact: producing a marked impression.” It treats both as standard English.

M-W has this “impactive” example (which we’ve expanded) from F. Scott Fitgerald’s 1934 novel Tender Is the Night: “Feeling the impactive scrutiny of strange faces, she took off her bath-robe and followed.”

And here’s the dictionary’s “impactful” example: “Fashion loves a big expansive gesture, but a small one can be pretty impactful, too” (from an article by Mark Holgate in Vogue, Oct. 30, 2017).

The two adjectives were originally formed by adding the suffixes “-ive” and “-ful” to the noun “impact,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The noun is believed to come from the Latin impactus, the participial stem of impingere (to impinge). The OED adds an asterisk to impactus, indicating that it’s “a word or form not actually found, but of which the existence is inferred.”

As it turns out, “impactive” showed up nearly a century before “impactful” appeared in the late 1930s, but the younger term is by far the more popular now, according to Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books.

The earliest example we’ve found for “impactive” is from The League’s Convert, an 1847 play by Henry W. Pearson about a king’s daughter who falls in love with a populist leader.

In this passage, she appeals to her lover to make peace with her father: “With philanthropic eye, review our race / As an impactive body, whereof they, / The members, serving the prime good of all.”

However that early literary example seems to be an outlier. The other 19th-century examples we’ve found are in technical works that describe the force of something, such as weight or wind or waves, on various structures.

For instance, the Scottish structural engineer William Fairbairn writes that the weight and speed of trains are “severe tests of impactive force on every structure, whether beams or bridges” (On the Application of Cast and Wrought Iron to Building Purposes, 1854).

As for “impactful,” the earliest example cited by the OED is from The Commentator magazine (June 29, 1939): “The coronation of a pope, the non-stop European crisis—these and kindred events become right-of-way news on radio—more immediate and impactful than even the front page.”

That example also appears in a 2019 post of ours about “impactful,” a word criticized by some language commentators. Although it’s standard English, we think many other words have more impact—“powerful,” “persuasive,” “forceful,” and so on.

As for the suffixes, let’s begin with “-ive,” which the OED says is derived from –ivus, a Latin suffix that formed adjectives when added to the participial stem of verbs (act-ivus, active) or nouns (tempest-ivus, seasonable).

The dictionary says the suffix is generally used in English to form words based on Latin terms with -ivus suffixes or to “form words on Latin analogies, with the sense ‘having a tendency to, having the nature, character, or quality of, given to (some action).’ ”

As for the English suffix “-ful,” Oxford says it’s used to form “adjectives with the sense ‘full of, or (more generally) having or characterized by (what is expressed by the first element)’. Also combined with verbs with the sense ‘liable or tending to —.’ ”

The OED adds that the suffix is derived from the Old English adjective full (“containing or holding as much or as many as possible; having within its limits all it will hold; having no space empty; filled to capacity”).

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots says the Old English adjective ultimately comes from the reconstructed prehistoric Germanic root fulla (full) and the Proto-Indo-European pelə- (to fill).

The OED notes that “in Old English the adjective full, like its cognates in the other Germanic languages, was frequently used as a suffix in combination with a preceding noun.”

In modern English, “-ful” usually combines with nouns derived from Old English or other Germanic languages (“harmful,” “tearful,” “frightful,” “playful,” “skillful”). But it’s also seen with nouns from Romance languages or Latin (“beautiful,” “colorful,” “fateful,” “graceful,” “masterful,” “tactful”).

Why have both “-ful” and “-ive” joined with “impact” to give us the adjectives “impactful” and “impactive”? And why does the more popular, “impactful,” link a prefix derived from Old English to a noun believed to come from Latin?

Why not? English is a Germanic language with many borrowings from non-Germanic languages, especially Latin, either directly or indirectly by way of French. We’ve written several times about this, including a 2018 post, When English met Latin.

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Q: I’m curious about this use of “which” in a US Supreme Court opinion from April 30, 1934: “Upon the submission of the cause the appellant made a motion to amend its assignments of error, which motion is now granted.”  I assume “which” is used here to avoid ambiguity. Why isn’t it used that way now?

A: Yes, the relative adjective “which” is being used in that opinion (Dayton Power & Light Co. v. Public Utilities Commission of Ohio) to avoid ambiguity. Although the usage isn’t seen much these days, it does show up at times.

This more recent example is from an April 7, 2020, resolution by the Louisville, CO, City Council on holding electronic hearings during the COVID-19 pandemic under rules set by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment:

“Whereas, also on March 25, 2020, the CDPHE issued an Amended Public Health Order 20-24 Implementing Stay at Home Requirements, which Order has since been updated twice.”

The Oxford English Dictionary says “which” here is a “relative adjective, introducing a clause and modifying a noun referring to (and esp.) summing up the details of the antecedent in the preceding clause or sentence.”

The usage dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, when “which” (spelled huælc, huelc, hwilc, etc.) was originally part of a prepositional phase that modified a noun.

The first OED citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a forged writ composed in the 12th century that purports to be King Edward the Confessor’s recognition of gifts by Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Lady Godgifu (Godiva) to build a monastery in Coventry in the 11th century:

“For uræ Drihten on larspelle þuss cweþ, Gestrynaþ eow sylfum mid ælmesdædum madme hord on heofonan and wunnunge mid ænglum. For hwilcæ neodlicum þingan icc cyþe eow eallum þæt icc ann mid fulre unne þæt þa ilce gyfe þæt Leofric eorl 7 Godgyfu habbað gegiuen Criste.”

(“For our Lord says in the Gospel, ‘Enrich yourselves with almsgiving, gain a treasure in heaven and a home with the angels.’ For which matter, it is necessary that I make known to you all that I confirm with full consent the gift that Earl Leofric and Godiva have given to Christ in the same way.”)

The OED’s first citation for “which” used similarly by itself, as in your example, is from Confessio Amantis (The Lover’s Confession, circa 1390), a Middle English poem by John Gower. Here’s an expanded version:

“So sit it wel to taken hiede / And forto loke on every side, / Er that thou falle in homicide, / Which Senne is now so general, / That it welnyh stant overal, / In holi cherche and elles where.”

(“So it is well to take heed / And to look on every side, / Ere that you descend to homicide, / Which sin is now so general, / That it well nigh stands over all, / In holy church and elsewhere.”)

We don’t know why this usage is seen less often now, but English speakers have other ways to clarify a sentence like the one you cite.

Here, for example, is a somewhat less lawyerly phrasing of that Supreme Court opinion: “The motion of the appellant to amend its assignments of error is now granted.”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.

Q: Have you noticed that “which” is now being used as a conjunction, as in “The Fed raised interest rates again, which I’m not sure if it’s a good idea”? And no, I don’t mean “which I’m not sure is a good idea,” a usage you referred to in a recent post.

A: The use of “which” as a conjunction has been around a lot longer than you think, but only one of the ten standard dictionaries we regularly consult has an entry for it.

Merriam-Webster says the conjunction is “an introductory particle” used “before a word or phrase that is a reaction to or commentary on the previous clause.” The usage is labeled “informal” (used in speech and casual writing, though not nonstandard).

M-W has an example similar to yours: “This morning we have the monthly jobs report, which who knows if it will meet or beat expectations.”

In that example, “which” precedes a clause. In M-W’s other two examples, it precedes a word or a phrase that stands in for a clause:

“I have a very big reputation in Vancouver for being a sore loser, which, fair enough.”

“The remains had initially been misidentified as those of an ‘enormous, possibly human-eating eagle,’ which … yikes.”

The dictionary says the first known use of “which” in this sense dates back to 1723. It doesn’t cite a source, but M-W may be referring to “Mary the Cook-Maid’s Letter to Dr. Sheridan,” a 1723 poem by Jonathan Swift. Here’s an excerpt:

And now, whereby I find you would fain make an excuse.
Because my master one day, in anger, call’d you goose:
Which, and I am sure I have been his servant four years since October,
And he never call’d me worse than sweetheart, drunk or sober.

The Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, says this “which” is “used in anacoluthic [syntactically inconsistent] sentences as a connective or introductory particle with no antecedent.”

The OED describes the usage as “chiefly English regional, U.S. regional, and nonstandard.” As for us, we’d consider the usage nonstandard until a few other standard dictionaries join M-W and accept it as informal.

Oxford dates this iffy usage from the early 15th century, much earlier than Merriam-Webster’s first dating of “which” used as a conjunction.

The first OED citation is from The History of the Holy Grail (circa 1410), by the English poet Henry Lovelich. In this passage, the blind Mordreins asks Josephes to advise him where to retire:

“I wolde that ȝe wolden Conseillen Me Where I myht ben In place preve, Awey from this peple here that scholen ben trowbled In diuers Manere, whiche that were gret Noysaunce to Me Amonges hem thanne forto be.”

(“I would that ye would counsel me where I might be in a place of privacy, away from these people here that shall be troubled in diverse manner, which that were a great annoyance to me among them for to be.”)

The most recent Oxford citation is from The Ground Beneath Her Feet, a 1999 novel by Salman Rushdie:

“If this is your wish Mr. Standish which I’m offering no opinion then so be it, it’s your call. You change your mind you come and see me.”

In a related entry, the OED discusses a similar, more recent colloquial use of “which” to introduce “a comment, exclamation, etc., in response or reaction to a preceding statement.”

The Oxford citations for this usage resemble some of the M-W examples mentioned earlier.

The earliest OED citation  is from an Aug. 23, 2004, entry on The Food Whore, a now-defunct website: “He wasn’t happy with me. Which, yeah. Whatever.”

The most recent example is a July 31, 2021, comment on Twitter:  “People always talk about how attractive Charlotte is (which, fair point) but Nancy … sigh.”

Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.