# Do you use "anymore" to mean "these days"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 20, 2015, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678 "2015-07-20T09:25:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/41 "2015-07-21T00:16:37Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > If it’s correct in “I don’t eat meat anymore,” how can it possibly be incorrect in “Anymore, it seems like everyone’s glued to their phones”? Just curious – what do you think about the sentence “Any longer, it seems like everyone’s glued to their phones”? ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/42 "2015-07-21T00:38:49Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > Oops, yes, I did mean in the positive sense. 😛 Looks like most folks understood what I meant, though, so thank you. As the first respondent to your question, I did not understand what you meant. I had never heard of the “positive” anymore until reading this thread. So my vote is wrong. I don’t get the hate for the positive use, though. It just seems like a regional variation to me. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/43 "2015-07-21T00:54:41Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I first heard the “positive anymore” some 50 years ago, from someone who was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. It struck me as WRONG at the time, and has remained WRONG ever since. I agree. It goes well beyond simple regionalisms and crosses well into jarring territory for reasons I can’t quite articulate well. Whatever the reason, the positive use does trip alarms in many people’s deep linguistic processing centers like few other innocent phrasings can. I can accept most regional slang, odd turns of a common phrase and other eccentricities but I don’t ever think I will be able to accept ‘anymore’ being used to start a sentence or as a positive modifier at any place in a sentence. Every time I encounter that use, it is just a shocking as the first time I heard it even though I know how to translate it intellectually. The only other regional phrase that affects me the same way is the Southern New England reply “So don’t I!” as in: “I really love the pizza at the new place down the street” “Oh, so don’t I!”. The difference is that the latter is grammatically incorrect and frankly retarded. I have tried to explain to otherwise reasonably intelligent people why it is obviously wrong to no effect and have gotten lots of push-back. The positive use of ‘Anymore’ isn’t technically grammatically incorrect but it is still sounds stylistically ass-backwards to me. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/44 "2015-07-21T01:00:31Z")
I don’t, and I also find it jarring. I don’t think I ever saw that use until I came to these boards. I also never heard needs blanked until here (the grass needs mowed, the dishes need washed)–another one that makes me shudder. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/45 "2015-07-21T01:02:12Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > “We get a lot of tourists around here anymore,” doesn’t sound wrong, just informal. > > “I’ll do it that way anymore,” sounds like something’s missing of got cross-threaded. > > "It seems, anymore, that . . . " doesn’t sound completely off. No, those are definitely all wrong. So are all the examples in the wiki article. The positive construction makes me feel like a cat whose fur has been petted against the grain every single time I hear it. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/46 "2015-07-21T01:05:18Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > No, those are definitely all wrong. So are all the examples in the wiki article. > > The positive construction makes me feel like a cat whose fur has been petted against the grain every single time I hear it. Agreed. Raised in the Deep South…currently lives in New England. That crap isn’t going to fly anywhere I have lived. ---
**Author:** ![PSXer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@PSXer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PSXer)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/47 "2015-07-21T02:02:37Z")
no it’s wrong and I always call people out for doing it on the internet ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/48 "2015-07-21T02:13:17Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > no > > it’s wrong and I always call people out for doing it on the internet Good man. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/49 "2015-07-21T02:26:05Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > \*After reporting on this, Quinn then produced a quotation from D. H. Lawrence’s “Women in Love,” in which Lawrence uses “any more” in that exact sense: “Quite absurd,” he said. “Suffering bores me, any more.” (The character who speaks the line is your typical early-century Upper-Class English Twit, not exactly an American Young Person of the late sixties.) > > So, the construction wasn’t truly unfamiliar to anyone on the panel who had read Lawrence, and as Quinn makes clear, sometimes dislike of an expression or construction results because it’s used by (or because you’re told it’s used by) people you don’t much like or respect. That is one fugly sentence that that Lawrence dude produced there, isn’t it? Luckily, these days I can totally ignore authors I want to ignore, even if they’re Official Great Writers We Must Respect. Since I’m not in high school English classes any more… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/50 "2015-07-21T02:28:34Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I’m not saying you’re wrong - this thread is a clear example of how familiar idioms are comfortable and unfamiliar ones appear strikingly wrong. > > But I do find your arguments strange. The ‘fast’ example just doesn’t work as an analogy, IMO - and it’s because ‘anymore’ is equivalent to ‘any more’. That may be its etymological origin, but it no longer has its purely literal meaning. It’s now become an adverb that means, as I said, “Now, as contrasted with the past.” Notice that it can be used about situations that have nothing to do with amount or quantity: “I don’t do that anymore.” What exactly is the “that” of which there is not “any more” in this situation? There is none. You’re not talking about some quantity of “that,” you’re talking about a change in your activities over time. That’s why I made the comparison with “fast”–another adverb that has a basic meaning, but which people do not restrict to just one side of the positive/negative polarity. The comparison may not make sense to you, but I assure you that saying “You can’t use ‘anymore’ in the positive” sounds just as weird to me as saying “You can’t use ‘fast’ in the positive” would. So, yeah, I would really like people who call the way I talk “crap” and “definitely all wrong” (to quote two recent posts in this very thread) to have some better justification for it than “Just because.” ---
**Author:** ![Graymalkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@Graymalkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Graymalkin)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/51 "2015-07-21T02:43:03Z")
First heard it from my wife-to-be 25 years ago. She is from Omaha. At first I thought it was just an endearing linguistic quirk she had, but I had the “anymore” used without a negative hit me in the face when I first visited her family those many years ago. I have heard it increasingly ever since, and once I almost said it, but caught myself. It’s sort of like dropping the “to be” in “Your laundry needs washed”–and in Omaha, and elsewhere, you’ll often hear “warshed.” ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/52 "2015-07-21T02:43:53Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > That may be its etymological origin, but it no longer has its purely literal meaning. It’s now become an adverb that means, as I said, “Now, as contrasted with the past.” Notice that it can be used about situations that have nothing to do with amount or quantity: “I don’t do that anymore.” What exactly is the “that” of which there is not “any more” in this situation? There is none. You’re not talking about some quantity of “that,” you’re talking about a change in your activities over time. The quantity of “that” is the number of times you have done “that”. You have done it a certain number of times in the past, but you are not going to do it any more times. “Any more I do that a lot” makes no sense. Removing the space doesn’t help. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/53 "2015-07-21T02:55:31Z")
> [@Absolute](#): > > “Any more I do that a lot” makes no sense. Removing the space doesn’t help. Makes perfect sense to me. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/54 "2015-07-21T03:01:58Z")
> [@Absolute](#): > > The quantity of “that” is the number of times you have done “that”. You have done it a certain number of times in the past, but you are not going to do it any more times. > > “Any more I do that a lot” makes no sense. Removing the space doesn’t help. Etymological fallacy. The point is not what any and more mean. It’s what anymore means when it’s used in constructions with positive polarity. For some people, those constructions are ungrammatical. For others, they aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/55 "2015-07-21T05:35:36Z")
I accept “anymore” in positive constructions after becoming used to it. It’s perfectly fine and colloquial English, though not a universal construct and somewhat regionalized. It still rings a little weird to my ears, as other “any X” phrases that I can think of are all negative. For example, at least in my dialect, “I play baseball any longer” is ungrammatical. Similarly, a construction like “Even though he sometimes forgets my birthday, I don’t love him any less” works, while any positive construction of “any less” doesn’t seem to work (or at least I can’t think of one.) Or “any better.” “Any more” fits this pattern to me, and is probably why it sounds odd to my ears. Do those in positive polarity constructions sound okay to folks for whom “any more” can be used in the positive sense? Not that it matters, because idiom is idiom, but that’s at least an explanation for us negative polarity “any more” users as to why it sounds weird. ---
**Author:** ![Elemenopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b5e925/32.png) [@Elemenopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elemenopy)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/56 "2015-07-21T05:48:37Z")
> [@Graymalkin](#): > > “Your laundry needs washed” I see nothing wrong with that construction. 😃 (born and raised in NW Indiana, with \*mostly \*untouchable diction.) I will say things like “The supermarket doesn’t have good steaks anymore.” Is that what is meant in the OP? ---
**Author:** ![Elemenopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b5e925/32.png) [@Elemenopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elemenopy)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/57 "2015-07-21T05:58:17Z")
Ok, double posting; that’s what I get for not reading the whole thread. I’m not sure if I’ve heard it in a “positive” sense as some of you are describing. I guess I would just chalk it up to a regionalism. I now live on the IN-OH border and haven’t heard that kind of usage yet, but I don’t get out much anymore. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/58 "2015-07-21T06:39:03Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > That may be its etymological origin, but it no longer has its purely literal meaning. It’s now become an adverb that means, as I said, “Now, as contrasted with the past.” Notice that it can be used about situations that have nothing to do with amount or quantity: “I don’t do that anymore.” What exactly is the “that” of which there is not “any more” in this situation? There is none. You’re not talking about some quantity of “that,” you’re talking about a change in your activities over time. A change in activity still connotes a ‘more of this thing’ sense - the sentence can still be rearranged to “I don’t do _any more_ of that [activity]” - whereas the opposite case doesn’t work for me: “I still do any more of that” All I can say is that in my dialect, the semantic connection remains sufficiently strong that it still feels wrong to use ‘anymore’ in (most) non-negative settings. You asked for an explanation and this is the best I can give - you don’t need to be wrong for me to be right; these are just different conventions of our two different cultural backgrounds. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/59 "2015-07-21T07:16:38Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > Oops, yes, I did mean in the positive sense. 😛 Looks like most folks understood what I meant, though, so thank you. I am not among those who did. Please fix the poll results to reflect one fewer “Yes,” and one more “No,” on my behallf. The only time “any more” should be at the beginning of a sentence is if the sentence bears the character of “Any more pie, or is it all gone?” ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2015, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678/60 "2015-07-21T09:19:31Z")
So how do those of you who die a little inside every time you hear a “positive anymore” feel about: “I love that restaurant but we stopped going when the traffic got so bad. How about you - do you go there anymore?” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-use-anymore-to-mean-these-days/725678.md?page=4)