Anyway vs. Anyways

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Guy from Appleton, Wisconsin.

Hi, Guy. Welcome to the show. What’s on your mind?

It started 20 years ago. I grew up always thinking that the word anyways was correct.

And I blissfully went around in life using the phrase anyways with abandon.

20 years ago, I met a girl who vehemently disagreed with me and would go all the time out of her way to correct when I would use the phrase anyways.

She would say, no, it’s anyway.

And it carried over into many of our friend relationships.

And it became a point of not, I wouldn’t say contention, but certainly it would create a lot of friction and playful, but it did lead to a food fight.

And it may have caused some amount of strife in lies that were otherwise untainted by this war of word.

Well, I can tell you, Guy, that the short answer is that anyways is a more informal use of this term.

In formal situations, style guides will tell you to use anyway rather than anyways.

But anyways is a part of plenty of dialects and is perfectly normal for a lot of people to use in the sense of it functions as a discourse marker, right?

You say anyways, like moving on or in any case or, you know, you all got married anyway.

But to put some more context to this, anyways in a variety of forms goes back to Middle English, Guy.

Yes, it’s very old.

That’s what I had heard as well. I had heard that as well, that in essence it was any number of ways.

And I at least held on to that as my reasoning for why I was right.

And we have models of other words that are similar to anyways, like always, that makes anyways make a lot of sense.

Yeah, always and sideways. So that’s a different sense of anyways, though.

That means in any way or in any manner.

Like, she didn’t help us anyways.

That’s a really, really old use of anyways that way.

But it’s not clear to me, Guy, from your examples, which anyway were.

They were always talking about one anyway.

It sounds like we might be talking about several anyway or anyways.

Which, you know, makes sense that there’s context of how it was being used.

I just, I can’t wrap my brain around not adding the S and then I say it anyways, anyways.

Yeah, yeah.

And it’s fine.

English allows it.

It’s a natural part of English.

You didn’t invent it.

Millions of people use it.

It’s okay.

But if you’re talking to like, you know, a king or a president or a judge or somebody with some authority, try using anyway instead of the S.

It’ll be a tad more formal.

Oh, okay.

And just to toss a couple grenades in the door before we lock it and shut you out, what about somewheres and nowheres and everywheres?

Oh, yeah.

Come on.

You can’t.

You can’t.

Now, there I go the other way.

You have to say somewhere, not somewheres.

Come on, Guy.

Open up that mind.

Well, anyway.

I feel like you’re challenging me to grow.

A little bit.

A little bit.

Anyway, thanks for calling guys and sharing your story and your memories, and we really appreciate it.

So take care of yourself.

Oh, thank you so much for having me on.

Bye.

Bye.