Everyday vs Every Day

[F.E.]

This discussion is kinda making me interested in knowing if "everyday" would be considered to be in the grammatical category of determinative instead of the category of adjective--for those grammars that have those two separate categories (as sister categories) where those grammars consider "every" as a determinative.

I think there are a bunch of tests, and there is also that distribution of usage, to consider to see if "everyday" behaves more like the prototypical determinative than the prototypical adjective.

[F.E.]

Originally Posted by Fallen

Oxford Concise Dictionary.

Oxforddictoinaries.com

I wondering though, in where a dictionary considers the adjective "everyday" to have the meaning of "daily", would those be sentences where the more common (standard) practice would be to use the two-word phrase of "every day"?

I'm thinking of those two examples that were in the usage dictionary Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, on page 320. In those two examples, it appeared to me that there was sloppy editing done.
.
.
Perhaps some distribution info, as to the relative frequency of finding the adjective "everyday" when it actually has that meaning of "daily" vs when it has the meaning of "commonplace". (And maybe some decent attested examples that use the "daily" meaning of the adjective "everyday".)

[Fallen]

Originally Posted by F.E.

I wondering though, in where a dictionary considers the adjective "everyday" to have the meaning of "daily", would those be sentences where the more common (standard) practice would be to use the two-word phrase of "every day"?

It's got to be noted, my concise Oxford dictionary, a chunky, nigh-on 1800 page thing, doesn't make a distinction between the two. The entry is simply:

everyday. adj. 1 daily 2 commonplace.

Yet the online version did:

'every day' daily (adverb)
'everyday' commonplace (adjective))

In such cases, I'd go with the online version (and think again of seriously updating my old faithful, lol). The online version will no doubt be updated according to latest frequency use, where my concise will just get frowned at.

[F.E.]

Originally Posted by Fallen

It's got to be noted, my concise Oxford dictionary, a chunky, nigh-on 1800 page thing, ...

What is it with that size of 1800 pages?

That dictionary is 1800 pages. The Quirk et al. 1985 reference grammar is 1800 pages. The Huddleston and Pullum et al. 2002 reference grammar is 1800 pages. Is that the only size available by their printers?

[F.E.]

Originally Posted by Fallen

It's got to be noted, my concise Oxford dictionary, a chunky, nigh-on 1800 page thing, doesn't make a distinction between the two. The entry is simply:

everyday. adj. 1 daily 2 commonplace.

Yet the online version did:

'every day' daily (adverb)
'everyday' commonplace (adjective))

In such cases, I'd go with the online version (and think again of seriously updating my old faithful, lol). The online version will no doubt be updated according to latest frequency use, where my concise will just get frowned at.

I'm not so sure that the online version should be considered to reliably be necessarily more accurate as to standard usage of today's English (though since it is "online" and digital, you'd think one should be able to). For if anything, I would've thought that the usage of the one word "everyday" for the meaning of "daily" would probably be increasing in frequency, than decreasing, considering how those types of word formation seem to be mostly occurring nowadays (though I don't really know for this specific case). (Also, I'm suspecting that it might be easier for a prescriptivist or two or more to slide some of their nonsense opinions into the online version or into digital files than into the older system of printed versions.)

[Fallen]

Originally Posted by F.E.

I'm not so sure that the online version should be considered to reliably be necessarily more accurate as to standard usage of today's English (though since it is "online" and digital, you'd think one should be able to). For if anything, I would've thought that the usage of the one word "everyday" for the meaning of "daily" would probably be increasing in frequency, than decreasing, considering how those types of word formation seem to be mostly occurring nowadays (though I don't really know for this specific case). (Also, I'm suspecting that it might be easier for a prescriptivist or two or more to slide some of their nonsense opinions into the online version or into digital files than into the older system of printed versions.)

It's just preferable in my case I don't know how old my hardback dictionary is.

[Kevin Nelson]

Originally Posted by Jamesaritchie

Say what? Words have meaning because they're assigned meaning by users. It is not a matter of what people think. You can think all day long that "red" means an ice cream sundae is about to land on your head, but this doesn't make it so.

Word meanings are, if not universal, then very close to it. We all have to accept the same meanings, or we can't communicate. All you're doing is failing to understand what some words mean, and no matter what you think, they still do not mean what you think they do. Yu get it wrong, and rather than looking it up, you justify it by saying it means whatever you think it means. Not hardly.

You can think all day long that "everyday" means whatever you wish, but as soon as you use it in print, editors will correct you, if they bother reading another word.

If I read one of your manuscripts, I have no idea what you were thinking. I do know what the words actually mean, however, and if it seems you do not, you'll get an instant rejection.

I have never claimed that the word means whatever I think it means. In fact, I have looked it up in several dictionaries now. All agree in assigning multiple senses to the word. Some definitions are along the lines of "daily," i.e. they are more or less the same as what I originally took to be the word's main meaning. Other definitions are along the lines of "ordinary," i.e. they are more or less the same as what you take to be the word's meaning.

Many words have multiple senses. This isn't an either/or matter.

For example, here is the entry in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary (second edition, 1993):

everyday, adj. 1. of or pertaining to every day; daily: an everyday occurrence. 2. of or for ordinary days, as contrasted with Sundays, holidays, or special occasions: everyday clothes. 3. such as is met with every day; ordinary; commonplace: a placid, everyday scene.

Incidentally, you may notice that whenever sense #1 is applicable, sense #3 is also applicable. Something that is met with literally every day is automatically ordinary. So I don't think I need to worry too much about using the word in sense #1 and offending an editor who is wedded to sense #3.

(If anything, it's the converse that might cause a problem. If you write "It was an everyday Christmas," meaning "It was an ordinary Christmas," that will come across as very strange to anyone who is attached to sense #1. "It was an everyday Christmas" is still something I wouldn't say, but I will now accept that there is a sense in which the sentence is legitimate.)

I said "Thought is what creates meaning," and that statement may have been misinterpreted as a claim that words mean whatever I think they mean. So let me try to clarify the general point.

In my opinion, people assign meanings to words by thinking about them in a particular way. If everyone thought "red" meant that an ice cream cone was about to land on your head, that would indeed be what the word meant. If some particular subculture thought that was what "red" meant, then the word would have that meaning within that subculture.

Lots of subcultures use words in nonstandard ways. Sometimes they may deserve criticism for doing so. As an extreme case, you can imagine a lone eccentric who assigns the meaning to "elephant" that others assign to "chair." (The example comes from another post in this thread.) I entirely agree that this eccentric individual is making a serious mistake. But his mistake is not about the meaning of the word "elephant." He is perfectly correct about the meaning of the word--for himself. Rather, his mistake is in thinking that any desirable consequences might come from assigning a meaning to the word in such an unusual way.

In less extreme cases, things are a lot less clear-cut. I hope you don't mean it quite literally when you say "we all have to accept the same meanings." That almost sounds like a demand that everyone in the world should speak just one dialect of one language. Are the British doing something wrong when they assign a different meaning to the word "football" than Americans do?

If what you really mean is that all speakers of a particular dialect must accept the same meaning for a word, I still can't accept that as anything close to an absolute statement. Many words have several different senses, with different senses being used in different contexts. (For example, there are words with specialized technical senses. In physics, "color" sometimes has a meaning very different from the one it ordinarily has.) Sometimes that does indeed cause confusion, and it's something you have to watch out for. But it's a significant part of language, and watching out for it isn't the same as trying to eliminate it. So I don't think I can agree with your statement that word meanings are close to universal.

"Everyday" is an example of the general point, but there are plenty of other examples. I could bring in some other words now, but I've gone on for long enough.

[Kevin Nelson]

Originally Posted by F.E.

Perhaps some distribution info, as to the relative frequency of finding the adjective "everyday" when it actually has that meaning of "daily" vs when it has the meaning of "commonplace". (And maybe some decent attested examples that use the "daily" meaning of the adjective "everyday".)

It looks to me like getting frequencies for the two senses would be awfully hard. The problem, which I mentioned in post #33, is that anything that occurs daily is automatically commonplace. So if an author uses "everyday" in the sense of "daily," the sense of "commonplace" will fit equally well.

I guess you might try to come up with contexts where that's not the case--e.g., "Joe Schmoe's everyday routine of dancing on the rooftop." But if he dances on the rooftop every day, then I'd call it ordinary for him.

This whole discussion is starting to remind me of the dispute over the meaning of "to lie," as in "to tell a lie." But I'm almost afraid to bring that up, since I can imagine things getting even more acrimonious.

[Bufty]

Acrimonious isn't the word that is plodding its way to the front of my mind.