this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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"of the sudden" (1570) actually predates "of a sudden" (Shakespeare) according to my OED as squinted at through the nifty magnifying glass. But it's been considered obsolete for a long time despite having all of a sudden experienced a resurgence.
(Note, I modernized the spellings of "sudden" rather than try to switch focus back and forth)
Can't we just embrace adverbification and agree to write "suddenly"?
all of the suddenly?
No! For made up reasons I don’t understand adverbs are verboten!
If "all of the sudden" becomes standard I will definitely do this.
Nothing wrong with "suddenly." I probably should have used it in my previous comment. It's just that sometimes you want to say "all of a sudden." Especially at storytime. The extra time helps build the suspense. "Suddenly" is more sudden in that it just jumps in there. With "all of a sudden," the subject isn't ready but the listeners are.
People aren't saying it because they're language scholars, it's because they misheard the proper modern usage. So it goes for many language shifts.