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Sooner than necessary

Language Log 2025-01-03

From Philip Taylor:

Just received this in an e-mail message — sender: American male, born (maybe) early to mid sixties, attended Dartmouth 1984 (or thereabouts) onwards.

Thanks Hilmar. I'll review/install soonly. -k

Seeking clarification, I asked Philip:

The man's name is Hilmar?

What's he going to review/install?

Philip replied:

Hilmar is the name of the addressee (Hilmar Preuße)— the sender was "k", a.k.a. Karl Berry.  "k" is going to review "another set of patches for manual pages".

"Soonly" has been around since the late 15th century.

OED's earliest evidence for soonly is from around 1475, in Partenay.

It appears in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Entry for this adverb in Wiktionary:

soonly (comparative more soonly, superlative most soonly)

    1. (nonstandard, dialectal or slang) Soon.

Quotations:

  • 2007, Willem Bilderdijk, Jan Bosch, M. van Hattum, Mr. W. Bilderdijk's briefwisseling, 1798-1806, page 155:
    I will entreat you, to do what's possible to finish this everlasting separation, which will kill me soonly, if not ceasing.
  • 1909, Wallace Irwin, “Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy”, in Collier's, volume 42, numbers 15-26, page xxiv:
    Dakota will soonly become one of them blissful married States.

Additional citations:

2012, Béatrice Knerr, Transfers from International Migration, page 49:

The Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency for Aceh and Nias (BRR) and the then soonly formed Government of Aceh, which was elected after the signing of the Republic of Indonesia (RI) – Free Aceh Movement (GAM) peace agreement, coordinated the use of foreign aid to ensure that people's shelter and other basic needs were met.

2012, Fortune Garcia, The Last Eagle, page 30:

HE WILL OR SOONLY CONSTRUCT A GLASS HOUSE IN PYRAMID OR FORM A.

2015, Ian Whybrow, Little Wolf’s Haunted Hall for Small Horrors:

Here is a pic of Haunted Hall, the scaryest school in the world (opening soonly)

Reference:

Dieter Kastovsky, Studies in Early Modern English (1994, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN), page 244: Such pleonastic forms as oftenly and soonly can be found as early as the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and must be attributed to analogy. Incidentally, Dr. Johnson includes soonly in his 1755 Dictionary, […]

Karl Berry was at Dartmouth twenty years after me, but I never heard "soonly" when I was up there.

 

Selected readings