{"id":47367,"date":"2020-06-07T16:42:16","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T21:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=47367"},"modified":"2020-06-07T17:18:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T22:18:19","slug":"whither-whence-whatever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=47367","title":{"rendered":"Whither, whence, whatever"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Mullan, \"The Mystery of Charles Dickens by AN Wilson review — a great writer's dark side<\/a>\", The Guardian<\/em> 6\/3\/2020 [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n

Then there is \u201cThe Mystery of the Cruel Marriage\u201d. Nothing has more tainted Dickens\u2019s reputation than his public repudiation (via an advertisement in the Times) of his wife, Kate, who had borne him 10 children and suffered all his demands for 22 years. Wilson\u2019s house, he tells us, overlooks the back garden of 70 Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, whence Catherine Dickens was exiled<\/u>,<\/strong> with the company of only one of her children, Charley, their eldest son. The others were forbidden to see her. We have found out recently that Dickens tried to have her certified insane, so that she would be put in an asylum. Not only did he want to be free to pursue an affair with Nelly Ternan, he wanted somehow to declare that it was all his blameless wife\u2019s fault. He was the wounded party.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In older English, whence<\/em> was used to mean \"from what place\", and whither<\/em> was used to mean \"to what place\". The context of the phrase in Mullan's review suggests that he meant whither Catherine Dickens was exiled<\/em> rather than whence Catherine Dickens was exiled <\/em>\u00a0— i.e. \"where Catherine Dickens was exiled to\" rather than \"where Catherine Dickens was exiled from\". The Wikipedia article for Catherine Dickens<\/a> confirms this:<\/p>\n

In June 1858, Charles and Catherine Dickens separated, and she moved into a property on Gloucester Crescent in Camden Town.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both whence<\/em> and whither<\/em> have been going out of style for two or three hundred years:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But throughout this time, whence<\/em> has been about five times more common:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Bob Ladd, who sent in the link, suggested a reason for the mistake:<\/p>\n

The only conclusion I can draw is that in writing Exhibit A, the reviewer (John Mullan) was aiming for \"whither\" and hit \"whence\" instead. To me, at least, \"whither\" sounds somehow more archaic than \"whence\" – I'm not sure why – so Mullan may have accessed \"whither\", thought \"No, that sounds weird, it can't be right\" and chose \"whence\" instead. Bad move.<\/p>\n

I'd go for a less conscious malapropism, probably of the Faye-Cutler<\/a> rather than the Sheridan<\/a> variety. In any case, it's interesting that neither Mullan nor the Guardian's editor caught it (although the Guardian has long outgrown the patterns that gave it the nickname Grauniad<\/a>…)<\/p>\n

The obligatory screenshot:
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Mullan, \"The Mystery of Charles Dickens by AN Wilson review — a great writer's dark side\", The Guardian 6\/3\/2020 [emphasis added]: Then there is \u201cThe Mystery of the Cruel Marriage\u201d. Nothing has more tainted Dickens\u2019s reputation than his public repudiation (via an advertisement in the Times) of his wife, Kate, who had borne him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-change"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47367"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47377,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47367\/revisions\/47377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}