My step father asked me this the other day. He is not one to end sentences with prepositions. In fact, he’s not one to ever make any sort of grammatical errors whatsoever. Growing up, Mr. Mensa was constantly correcting my grammar. He had the vocabulary of William F Buckley, and reveled in making me uncomfortable in conversation. I was just a tyke when he pulled out the “ingenious/ingenuous” trick.
So he asked that “at” question the other day. This made me unconfortable because I “knew” that he was being his usual uber-grammatical self, and I was again ignorant of this usage. Did I mention I’m 39? So I didn’t tell him I was home, as he called me there, but instead tolding about my employement situation.
So, I come here and ask, does “Where are you at,” have some sort of ironic witty meaning that escapes me?
I’d say it has the same meaning as, ‘Where are you coming from?’. In other words, where is your head at, what sort of mindset are you using to interpret worldly phenomena, with the implication that you need a saner or more stable one.
I always figured the meaning was that the speaker didn’t understand that “where” means “at what place,” making the “at” at the end of the phrase redundant.
I guess what was bugging me was, as Garry T and sailor said, the “at” is unneccessary, and to my ear ungrammatical. However my step-father is the apotheosis[sup][/sup] of grammar, so I had to conclude he was using it correctly. In a combination of aldiboronti’s and eno801’s posts perhaps he’s, somewhat sarcastically, modifying his speech to match his preceived notion of my speech, and the ignorance manifest therein.
[sup][/sup]Picked up the word “apotheosis” from Sewer Urchin in “The Tick.”