Prper Use of "Whence"

[LurkMeister]

@Gorsnak

If “from whence” is good enough for Shakespeare and Milton, it’s good enough for me.

Or for that matter, Frank Loesser:

@Frank Loesser

So take back your mink.
To from whence it came

[AskNott]

@Bambi Hassenpfeffer

A word I have only ever heard from my mother. A Hoosier, like you.

So to use whence properly: “Whence come dast and dasn’t?”

I believe it came from darest and darest not. Darest sometimes comes as “durst,” as in Frank Zappa’s The Torture Never Stops. ("…disagree? No one durst.") More simply put, “I da’sn’t,” means, “I don’t dare.”

I’m pretty sure I didn’t pick up dasn’t from my parents, but I don’t remember where I first met the word. It seemed to fit with the mock pompous tone I was using. I don’t even know if it gets one apostrophe or two.

[sjc]

I think “from whence” is useful for stylistic purposes. I don’t see it as substandard either.

Redundancy is a common feature of language, even if the pedants rail against it.

I can see not using double negatives because the objections are now so ingrained in most of our psyches, but “from whence” seems fine to me in most cases.

Whence this strange objection to “from whence”?