Talk:here and there

RFV discussion: January–August 2015

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here and there

Rfv-sense: "From time to time"

MWOnline has it. I've never heard it. Is it archaic, obsolete? Does the OED have it? DCDuring TALK 05:12, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

No, the OED has only the sense of scattered through space, not time. The equivalent expressions for time are now and then and now and again. I suppose the expression is sometimes used of time, by analogy, but I don't really think it means scattered through time. How do we distinguish between a meaning and a metaphor? Dbfirs 14:20, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dbfirs: Thanks. I didn't think so, but I suspect you are right about metaphorical use. We don't have too much trouble with many mature metaphor-derived senses of nouns like head, but "live"-but-dying metaphors (or protologistic metaphor-based senses) are harder. It would be nice to have some actual instances of the purported temporal use that we could assess. OED was my best hope, but I'll try some other dictionaries that sometimes have citations. DCDuring TALK 14:34, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

e.g. 2009, John Bogard, The Message from the Cosmos (page 63): "Before we study his ideas, it is useful to note here again that extraterrestrial powers intervened here and there in his life, as early as his birth, then his baptism […] ". Equinox ◑ 15:13, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, after trawling through more than 200 Google Books, I found another example from 2011, R. E. Donald, Slow Curve on the Coquihalla (chapter 23): "Yep. Since nineteen sixty, or thereabouts. Missed a few years, here and there."

I suppose "at this and that point in space" can be used by analogy to mean "at this and that point in time", just as "now and again" is sometimes used for points in space. We are travellers through the four-dimensional manifold.

I wonder if "intermittently, occasionally" would be a better definition than "from time to time"? Dbfirs 16:55, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Weird. I'd consider it pretty common, as common as the spatial sense. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:37, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you move at a different speed and so live on a different world line? :) Dbfirs 20:27, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I think it's often ambiguous. I find the 2009 cite ambiguous, though not the 2011 cite. In any event, the citations will be proof against a COPYVIO of MW Online, especially if we use them to support wording such as Dbfirs'. DCDuring TALK 19:03, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

It certainly can mean now and again in my idiolect. I would argue that in most cases, the meaning of spatially scattered and temporally scattered are so inextricably linked for that it must necessarily mean both. For instance in the sentence "The man showed up here and there," the appearances of the man must necessarily be spatially and temporally separated, which might have given rise to the figurative meaning of now and then. I also agree that it is very hard to construct sentences that are explicitly of one meaning or the other. —JohnC5 ^{(Talk | contribs)} 20:57, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

But you can't say "The man showed up here and there at his kitchen window overlooking the road."

You would have to say "now and again" where the spatial context is restricted. Dbfirs 10:35, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't say "The man showed up now and again at his kitchen window overlooking the road" but instead "Now and again, the man showed up now and again at his kitchen window overlooking the road" or "The man showed up at his kitchen window overlooking the road now and again." For some reason, that placement after the verb does not work for me. But in the other two locations, I could definitely say "Here and there, the man showed up at his kitchen window overlooking the road" and "The man showed up at his kitchen window overlooking the road here and there." This, however, may just be the topicalization or backing obscuring the apparent spatial contradiction. —JohnC5 ^{(Talk | contribs)} 10:50, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I wonder how widely this is shared. Thank goodness we don't have to depend on individual reporting of their idiolect. DCDuring TALK 12:49, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Ive found one more cite, not sure about the year because the book seems to have been privately published by the author: Andre Maxwell Jacob, And Then There Was Life! (page 218): "She told Justina and Miles everything, pausing here and there trying to remember every little detail of her day."

If my sample of books is representative of the corpus, then usage for a timelike interval is less than 1% of usage for a spacelike interval. Dbfirs 21:09, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not at all surprised by the rarity of unambiguously temporal cites for this particular term, where both main terms are principally spatial and alternatives like now and then are available. In my idiolect, I try to use the words that are more specific to the temporal realm. At least I think I do. It is fascinating how many basic time words, like prepositions (after, before) have a spatial etymology. DCDuring TALK 21:23, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd say this passes RFV, although it seems to be uncommon. Using the collocation Dbfirs hit upon, with "years", I can find several more citations: google books:"years here and there". In most, it seems to be (as someone wrote above) that time is being considered as an almost spatial dimension; for instance, in this citation it's easy to picture a timeline (physical thing) from which one is removing or adding million-year sections:

• 2006, Nathan Todd Cool, Is it Hot in Here?: The Simple Truth about Global Warming, page 84:

  With our Earth reaching the now ripe old age of 4.5 billion years (give or take a few million years here and there) and modern humans coming on to the scene only around 32,000 years ago during what's known as the Paleolithic Era, […]

- -sche (discuss) 17:10, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I'm happy that we took the trouble to confirm it and have something that OED doesn't have, however relatively uncommon it may be. DCDuring TALK 17:53, 7 August 2015 (UTC)