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putting “use" to a use that dates from the 1600s. For the record, the verb is “used,” not “use,” in the past tense, but it’s “use,” not “used,” with “did.” Thus, “we used to waltz,” but “We didn’t use to shag.”
The editors of Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage don’t parse “still and all,” but they approve it as “clearly standard today.” Writers like the idiom, they add, “because it is less formal than the starchy 'nevertheless’; and less abrupt than the monosyllabic ‘still.’ It has, in other words, a casual, conversational quality which is consistent with the informal tone of much modem prose.”
Critics who complain of senseless idioms are wasting their worries. One of the glories of English is that it so often flies off into bizarre constructions. How did “right” get to be a generic modifier, as in “right large,” “right small” and “right now?”
Lexicographers may labor over such mysteries. Most writers will be content simply to take idioms as we find them, delighting in their spicy taste upon the tongue.
Copyright 1995
Universal Press Syndicate
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