| 词组 | you was |
| 释义 | you was As you gradually lost its use as a second-person plural pronoun and came to serve as both a singular and a plural, various expedients had to be developed to make the distinction that the pronoun had lost. One obvious way to distinguish between singular and plural is by means of the verb, and Strang 1970 tells us that in the 17th and 18th centuries it was a common practice to use the singular verb with you when addressing just one person. But as early as Swift's time, Strang reports, you was was pretty much restricted to informal and nonliter-ary uses, as in correspondence. Here are a few examples from 18th-century letters, the first of which, from The Spectator, is supposed to have been written by the butler of* Sir Roger de Coverly at the time of his master's death: • Knowing that you was my old Master's good Friend, I could not forbear sending you the melancholy News —Joseph Addison, The Spectator, 23 Oct. 1712 • I am just now as well, as when you was here —Alexander Pope, letter to Swift (in Lowth 1762) • ... which you was so good as to send me —Sir Alexander Dick, letter to Samuel Johnson, 17 Feb. 1777 Even these innocuous uses were censured by Lowth 1762. Producing examples from the letters of Pope, Bo-lingbroke, and Richard Bentley, Lowth called the usage "an enormous solecism." Other grammarians followed. A few seem to have disagreed, and Noah Webster argued on both sides at different times. Yet by the 19th century, you was had been relegated to the speech of the uneducated, where it is still to be found. |
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