A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over cover image

Big Bang - 12 December 2022

A Way with Words - language, linguistics, and callers from all over

00:00

How Come to Ask Why?

The phrase, how come to ask why? doesn't make any sense to me. There's a frown upon by English teachers sometimes who prefer that people would use why instead of how come. How come is an Americanism from the mid-1800s and there's some speculation that it's a shortening of longer phrases such as how comes it that. We don't know that that's what it's from.

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