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Where did the idiom every other come from?
"I married Marsha because every other girl in town laughed in my face" makes sense literally but if you interpret it idiomatically, you've proposed to hald the girls in town.
I don't find anything explaining the origin of "every other" in the sense of alternating between selecting and deselecting items in a sequence, as opposed to inverting a prior selection.
I feel sorry for anyone trying to learn how to speak English. John W. Campbell once proposed a phonetic alphabet designed to confuse and confound the enemy by using words that sound like they start with another letter. That is, quixotic pneumonia would be QP, not KN. He asked readers for help finding letters, but I don't think he ever published a complete alphabet.
deaconB said: I don’t find anything explaining the origin of “every other” in the sense of alternating between selecting and deselecting items in a sequence, as opposed to inverting a prior selection.
I think the phrase "every other" simply has 2 logical meanings, and the meaning would have to be inferred from context in each specific case.
1. I married Marsha because every other girl in town laughed in my face. Here the meaning is clearly "every girl other than Marsha."
2. I pulled every other box off the conveyor belt. Here the meaning could be "all but one box" or "every second box in the series" so further context would be needed. If the latter meaning is intended, then to be totally clear I would rewrite the sentence as something like: I pulled every second box off the conveyor belt.
I share your pity for those attempting to learn our language. I've been speaking it all my life, and it still confuses me sometimes.
Heimhenge said
I think the phrase "every other" simply has 2 logical meanings, and the meaning would have to be inferred from context in each specific case.
I ought not mention that there is only *one second item in a series. "Every second item" is as idiomatic as "every other item" for the literal "alternating items. I'm not questioning yjr meaning of either idiom, nor their validity in writing or speaking. They are firmly entrenched in the language.
My question is when where, and how these ifions, which conflict with the literal sense of their words, came into being. I can conjecture that animals were coming off the ark, and Noah said "I'll grab the first one that exits the ark and leas it to freedom, and you grab every other one" except that Noah didn't take two of every species; he took seven cattle, for instance. That is, if you believe the boble. But most people who claim to believe thye ninle haven't read it, and they think he took two of each species. And if you don't believe every word of the bible, the first seven chapters of Genesis will surely trigger your disbelief.
The phrase every other simply has two meanings. One of those meaning has a more idiomatic quality. It is not much different from greenhouse vs green house. It is up to the speaker -- and in this case the writer -- to ensure the context makes the meaning clear. When I speak the non-idiomatic version, I use stronger stress and stronger juncture. Consider speaking these phrases (oronyms) and trying to distinguish them for the listener:
nitrate vs. night rate
a name vs. an aim
ice cream vs. I scream
the stuff he knows vs. the stuffy nose
When I use every other idiomatically for alternating, I tend to run it together more -evryothr, and may even run it into the next word it is modifying. When I mean all of the remaining, I tend to pronounce it more distinctly with more stress on the first syllable of other.
A: Did Jack go to the coffee shop on Tuesday?
B: He goes there every other day, so of course he did.
A: Did Jack go to the coffee shop on Tuesday?
B: He goes there every other day [evryothrday], so the odds are 50-50. Do you know if he went on Monday?
Glenn said
The phrase every other simply has two meanings.
Yes - but when did the idiomatic, as opposed to the literal, meaning enter the language? Could it possibly be found in Tom Sawyer, in Poor Richard's Almanack, in Hamlet, in Canterbury Tales?
And how did the idiomatic meaning of the phrase arise?
Using the Google ngram viewer, I find the phrase used almost exclusively in the literal sense between 1500 and 1672, but for the New Annual Register in 1603 which may use the idiomatic when it mentions "the mules that bring it only travel by night; yet a flock always arrives at Cadiz regularly every other day." Otherwise, I don't find it used in the idiomatic sense until the 1660s, and in all cases there, it's ambiguous as to whether they mean the idiomatic sense of "alternating" or the literal sense of "all remaining".
FWIW, the ngram viewer doesn't distinguish between the two meanings, but I find it interesting that the phrase reached peak frequency in the late 1700s, and has seen steadily declining usage ever since
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