Mallory in Minneapolis wonders about her father’s all’s, as in all’s you have to do. That final s isn’t a plural tacked onto all, but likely the remnant of an older contraction, from all as, with the sense of all that. The related form alst points toward all that as another source, and both forms have an old-fashioned or rural flavor without belonging to just one region. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““All’s” is a Fossil Contraction in “All’s I Know””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Mallory. I’m calling from Minneapolis.
Hi, Mallory. Welcome.
Well, I have a question about something my dad says. My father is a very articulate man. He constantly corrects me on my grammar, specifically between words like lay and lie and scenarios kind of like that. But there’s one thing that he says that I probably relish a bit too much in making fun of him for. But he often says the word all. So the example would be, you know, he says something to the effect of, all you have to do is fix this, or all I have to do. And it’s just this one thing he does over anything else that’s grammatically, you know, questionable to me. But I don’t know if it maybe has a history from where he’s from, or it’s kind of common to the region he grew up in. And I just am kind of curious about why he might say this one word this way.
So, Mallory, you correct him every time he says alls?
Oh, yeah, I usually do. I go, what do I have to do, Dad? What do I have to do? And then how does he react? Usually he just kind of smirks at me and kind of just smiles and laughs and then goes, yeah, okay, all you have to do.
So you’re saying he should just say all instead of alls?
Yeah. And does he say why he says it? You know, he doesn’t necessarily know for sure. He thinks it may be something. He grew up in northern Indiana in South Bend, and he thinks maybe it’s something to do with the community he grew up in up there, and a couple people he knows from there say it as well. And that’s kind of what he thinks, maybe, but he doesn’t know for sure. It’s not geographically centered. There’s no one place in the world where it’s said maybe a little more in Scotland, but it’s widespread throughout the English-speaking world.
Here’s the news, Mallory. You’re probably wrong.
Okay.
And it’s because it’s not alls. It’s just an accidental S. It’s not all turned plural. It’s all A-L-L apostrophe S. And it’s probably a contraction for all that or all as, right? You might say alls I know is you need to get out of there, which is a contraction for all as I know is. Now, I know that sounds odd to say all as, but it is an archaic construction. And what we have is the all’s contraction kind of turned idiomatic. So we’ve kind of passed on and no longer say what it was contracted from, but we still say the contraction. So it’s like a fossil.
Oh, okay. Like shouldn’t is kind of in that same category. Most of us wouldn’t say, should I not?
Yeah. The other thing is some people have suggested it’s a contraction of all that instead of all as. And this is because there’s a variant form, alst, A-L-S-T, which is also very common. It’s kind of marked as rural or kind of marked as archaic or old-fashioned. But that alst is more or less, I say more or less because it’s complicated, a contraction of all that. All that I know is you need to get out of there. Alst I know is you need to get out of there.
I’m sure he’ll be glad to know that I’m wrong.
You don’t have to tell him.
Yeah, don’t tell him. But it does kind of underscore the pitfalls of correcting people.
Yeah, no, absolutely. No, and that’s why I was curious because, you know, I was just correcting him. And I’m like, well, maybe he’s right. I don’t know. So that’s why I wanted to ask the question.
Yeah, and it’s interesting. It’s good to hear of a family, though, that takes care about their speech and that you guys treat it with humor and gentleness and not kind of this all-out warfare that some folks do.
Yeah, it seems like you have a good thing going. That’s the right attitude. Mallory, thank you so much for giving us a call.
Thank you very much.
All right, take care now.
Take care. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Thank you. I’m glad to square that away for her. I really was interested in the fact that they do have that relationship.
I was going to say. I guess I kept trying to say that, and I’m not sure I got it out, but I just wanted to say Mallory and her father have the right attitude when it comes to gently kind of, you know, winking and nudging and saying, oh, really, Dad, that’s how you’re going to say that? That’s how I should be. That’s how I learned a lot of grammar was my mother correcting me. But gently, with love.
Yeah.
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