Every time I decide to cut William Safire some slack or just let him be, he does something so egregious I have to drag him once again before the bar of justice. His latest “On Language” column is called “Go To!” and is mostly an unobjectionable discussion of the spread of two terms that originated in sports jargon: go-to (as in “go-to guy”) and walk-off (as in “walk-off home run”); he wonders if the latter will undergo the same kind of metaphoric extension as the former. But, being Safire, he’s unable to broach the subject he wants to talk about without a cutesy historical lead-in, and since he knows essentially nothing about the history of language and apparently is not subjected to the humiliation of having his column fact-checked, he regularly perpetrates howlers in his tossed-off intros. This time he begins:
The sleepwalking Lady Macbeth, obsessively trying to wash her hands of imaginary blood, is observed by a Doctor of Physic and a horrified Waiting-Gentle-Woman. As Shakespeare’s most famous villainess cries, ”Out, damned spot!” the doctor whispers a warning to his fellow witness: ”Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.”
The meaning of the imperative go to, four centuries ago, was ”beat it,” now ”geddoutahere” or, as those who cherish archaisms still say, ”get thee hence.” In our time, those two short words have fused into a compound adjective with a wholly different meaning, and that modifier is sweeping the language…
Did he even glance at the scene he’s quoting? The Doctor and the Gentlewoman, secretly observing Lady Macbeth, are overcome by horrified compassion and exchange murmured comments to each other after each of her outbursts. When she says “The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?—No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting,” the Doctor says, clearly to Lady Macbeth though of course not for her ears, “Go to, go to; you have known what you should not,” and the Gentlewoman agrees: “She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: heaven knows what she has known.” And regardless of the addressee, the phrase simply does not mean what Safire thinks it means, as a glance at the OED would have told him: definition 91b under go is:
go to Used in imp. to express disapprobation, remonstrance, protest, or derisive incredulity; —Come, come!
When Richardson’s Mrs. Jewkes says to Pamela “Go to, go to, naughty, mistrustful Mrs. Pamela; nay, Mrs. Williams […] I may as good call you,” she is not (forsooth) telling her to go away, she is chiding her for her supposed mistrust. (I should mention that at that time the abbreviation Mrs. was read “Mistress” and did not imply married status.)
I beg you, Times, exercise some quality control!
“…is not subjected to the humiliation of having his column fact-checked…”
Here be truth. Good catch. I vaguely wondered about Safire’s reading of ‘go to’ but it sounded plausible enough that I didn’t check it. There’s a moral in there somewhere.
Interesting that “go to” has the essentially opposite meaning “come,come”, though the latter seems to be a gentler form.
A Dutch equivalent: “ga weg” (go away) is a similarly used exclamation; also expresses astonishment, as in “you’re kidding!”
A lot of conservatives have a predeliction for prescriptive grammar and cute archaisms. Safire especially, but George Will and Bill Buckley dabble in it, and as I remember James Jackson Kirkpatrick did too. There may be others. (Buckley wrote a “book” about Latinisms in English, IIRC. Not a scholar, but he plays on on TV).
What does the OED say about the usage of “go to” in the King James Bible? In the favorite passage of linguists, Genesis 11:7, God says
This (with similar usages throughout the KJV) seems to be merely hortative, bleached of any chiding tone. We would say “Let’s go!” in similar case. How did the mere hortative manage to exist alongside the deprecative?
I’m always up for a nice round of beating Safire with sticks, but I’m not so sure about this case. 91b–93b in my edition–may be an expression of disapprobation or protest, but the examples are all cases analagous to “come, come”. That is, the speaker is protesting the listener’s veracity, whether chidingly or incredulously. That doesn’t seem to fit the situation of Macbeth. The doctor and the wmoan may be horrified and even shocked that Lady Macbeth is saying the things she is saying, but they are hardly disbelieving or shocked by the facts she is presenting. The rumors have been flying in the play for a long time. It’s a bit of a stretch to believe that the doctor’s response to Lady Macbeth’s revelations would be “come, come,” even given her tenuous mental state.
93a (presumably your 91a), however, gives us a far more plausable explanation:
To go about one’s work, to get to work. Chiefly in imp. as an exhortation = Come on! L. age. Obs.
This is the usage Safire attributes to Shaks., and I have to say, I agree. The doctor, knowing both of them, but particularly the gentlewoman, will be in danger if they are found eavesdropping, attempts to send her off. The woman responds somewhat tartly that if she wasn’t meant to overhear it, then perhaps Lady Macbeth shouldn’t have said it.
Of course, the interpretation depends on how one imagines an actor saying the lines. I suppose it is possible to imagine the doctor as just kindly enough to be expressing sympathy here, and perhaps the woman as well, but in my mind the parallel between “known” (heard) and “spoke” sets up the gentlewoman as giving the doctor a defensive, sharp reply with a heavy emphasis on “spoke” to shift the blame from the person how has heard to the person who has spoken.
perhaps he should be subjected to endless loops of the “walk-off” scene in the film zoolander. i’m just saying.
I think that if Safire said it, it’s wrong, and we shouldn’t let any pointy-headed Shakespeare scholars confuse the issue.
93a (presumably your 91a)
Yes — I was consulting my beloved, beat-up first-edition OED, and I wonder which two definitions have been shoehorned in since it was published?
At any rate, I’m afraid I must disagree with you. Even assuming for the sake of argument that the phrase is used in the 93a sense, that is not “the usage Safire attributes to Shaks” — he quite specifically says he thinks it means ‘beat it, get out of here,’ not ‘go about one’s work.’ And while I can imagine that the sentence is spoken to the Gentlewoman, I find it hard to construe it with the sense you want. Here are the relevant (non-Scottish) OED examples:
1583 HOLLYBAND Campo di Fior 9 Go to now bring me a doublet.
1611 BIBLE Gen. xi. 3 And they sayd one to another; Goe to, let vs make bricke.
1645 USSHER Body Div. (1647) 56 Go to then, shew first how many ways sinne is to be considered.
1690 W. WALKER Idiomat. Anglo-Lat. 208 Go to! let it be done.
It seems to me clear that “go to” in this sense was accompanied by some indication of what was to be done, some reinforcing phrase. “Go to, you have known what you should not” sounds much more like a more general “Come, come! Dear me!” use. Be that as it may, it does not and has never meant what Safire thinks.
Oh, my, just another instance of John Emerson (who is NOT a scholar but plays one online – are there “books” involved, too?) not mixing his politics and purely linguistic matter…
Martin- “Get out!” is often used similarly in English. I seem to recall seeing apage! used this way in Plautus as well, but I can’t recall where.
It was a JOKE, Tatyana! A JOKE!
Louder, John.
Darlings, I can’t imagine what use the OED is in tracing exclamations in The Scottish Play. “Go to” is, in fact, of course, a misheard version of the Scots “gyte”, which means “crazy”. (“Google” is Scots for “deceive”, but that is none of our business.)
There are naturally other readings. One has Lady Macbeth entering with a tapir, a beast which when Shakespeare was writing was beginning to penetrate European consciousness and may, for all I know, have been a much-desired pet. The doctor is alarmed by this and cries “Koto, koto!”, the koto being a type of Japanese sword popular in the 16th century and possibly used in rhinoceros-sticking and other types of browser war at the time.
I would very much like to see a performance of the play under your direction.
LH, it has been done in the old country[ies] for years.
Tell me more: I am still a thrall to James Thurber and his Macbeth Murder Mystery.
“Get away” is common in UK English still as an expression of disbelief. Come to think of it, so is “fuck off!” in my neck of the woods at least. Clearly there is a deep connection.
To be mainly irrelevant, I was wondering just the other day why the abbreviation for Missus had an ‘r’ in it, but now I have a new question: how come Mrs changed from being an abbreviation for Mistress with no connotations of being married to being one for Missus complete with connotations of being married? Is Missus some kind of contraction of Mistress? (I suppose I could look it up on Google…)
To be less irrelevant, I agree with Stephen’s comment about “get away!” and “fuck off!” and would like to add that in the NE of England, we are sometimes known to say “had away!” to mean the same. I suspect had is something to do with hold, as in “had on, man!” (“hold on!” or “I say, wait for me!” in standard English), but it seems a bit odd to say “hold away!”, so maybe I’m wrong.
No, your instinct is right. It’s a northern expression that’s also in Scots; the Dictionary of the Scots Language says:
to haud awa’, (1) to keep away, keep out or off (Sh., ne.Sc., Ags., m.Lth. 1956); in imper. = let alone, not to mention; hence phr. haud awa frae, with the exception of (ne.Sc. 1956); (2) to continue on one’s way, go away (Uls. 1880 Patterson Gl.; Sh., ne.Sc., em.Sc.(a), Slk. 1956)
go to’s are also considered harmful
Go to: just an endless loop,when used in a judicious manner, it will spagetti one’s test of thought,when basically written .
Returning to William S. [I think Language Hat’s instincts are right with this columnist], perhaps we should create a new word for an irritating pedant who persistently gets it wrong?
Suggestions? Is there a word already?
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Since Safire only ever crops up here in his persona as maven-cum-tosser, I am moved to wonder why anyone reads him at all?
It is important to debunk some kinds of rubbish (creationisme being the shiningest example), but this kind of rubbish is surely of no consequence whatever.
If they replaced Safire with Trevor, _that_ I’d read, though but.
this kind of rubbish is surely of no consequence whatever
Oh, how I wish I could agree and leave Mr. Safire bobbing behind in the backwash as I sail on to better things, but I’m afraid a regular column in the Newspaper of Record is ipso facto of consequence, and far too many people take it as gospel and get reinforcement of their already distorted sense of language from it. So debunk I must.
Just reread and enjoyed your attack on David Foster Wallace.
Though I side very much with your attack on a pompous pedant’s lack of the accuracy he boasts of, two thoughts quickly:
1/ When he writes ‘inditement’, does he mean ‘indictment’?
2/ I read the two would-be-ambiguous sentences aloud, and I have to admit to finding the first one, yes, a little ambiguous.
“People who eat this often get sick” surely means either of
a/ People who eat this often, get sick – in other words, eat it enough and you are sure to get sick, as against
b/ People who eat this, often get sick – meaning even eating it once frequently causes sickness?
A poor example of ambiguity on his part, admittedly, since they are very close together and pretty much any food qualifies for ‘often’ enough in [a], but does this not just about get over the bar?
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How did the mere hortative manage to exist alongside the deprecative?
To illustrate my last remark: Jehovah and the Tower; Noah and the Ark. What did they say just when everything seemed so dark? “You’ve got to accentuate the hortative, eliminate pejoratives, latch on to the deprecative, and don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.”
1) You tell me: does “indictment” make any sense in that context?
2) As I say there, “say them aloud (or imagine them said aloud) and the meaning is clear.” If you mean a, you’ll stress “often” and pause slightly after it; if you mean b, you’ll stress “eat” and pause slightly before “often.” If you’re writing the sentence, you’ll probably want to rewrite for clarity, which has nothing to do with “rules” — you can’t make a rule to solve every conceivable ambiguity.
Neat answer on (2), LH – I didn’t realise you were saying that saying them aloud to unpick the difference was enough!
As for (1), I don’t know the word ‘inditement’, but I don’t understand what he writes in the snippet you quote – as you say, perhaps because he doesn’t either. I was unable to find it in the longer article. Is that one word he makes out of ‘inditement-emphasis’?
Thanks for advising my student Judit the other week, by the way!
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perhaps we should create a new word for an irritating pedant who persistently gets it wrong? Suggestions? Is there a word already?
Steven Pinker just uses Safire’s own term “language maven” as a pejorative.
I’m afraid the phrase ‘go to’ always reminds me of ‘1066 and All That’:
‘She didn’t say where, but he got the message.’
Which reminds me that the OED, amusingly, has the following under “go”:
to go to Jericho, Bath, Hong Kong, Putney, etc.: used imperatively or optatively to imply that one desires to see no more of a person, or does not care what becomes of him. Similarly to go to Halifax
Gee, you think there might be some additional information they’re withholding? Victorians…
I did go to Putney, and must aver the OED’s on to something here…
Go thou to Rome – at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
I do beg your pardon — that line wasn’t in ‘1066 …’ at all; ’twas in Will Cuppy’s ‘The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody.’
LH, could that reading possibly be similar to the Russian “[would you]go to..3 letters”? Пошёл на… А не пошёл бы ты на…
Sounds strangely familiar. And useful.
Thanx!
Another example of the same thing in modern usage is “come on.” “Come on” has many meanings:
“Come on, let’s go” or “Come on over.” Usually pronounced “C’mon.” (almost always with a rising tonality, too) Only time it is fully pronounced is when it’s assumed the addressee will not comply.
“Come on, you can’t really believe that?” A lot like “go to” and “come, come” (and many other similar phrases) in the discussion above. Sometimes fully pronounced as two separate words, occasionally “c’mon” but with a different tonality.
“Was that a come on?” or “Did he come on to you?”
A pass, or a flirtatious advance. Never pronounced “c’mon” when this meaning is intended.
Once there was a clergyman who wrote to his bishop requesting funds to study in the Holy Land. He received the following by return mail:
Dear Mr. Sturgeon:
Go to Jericho.
Yours,
“Go to” in the Biblical sense (“chiefly imperative, as an exhortation”) was marked obsolete in the OED1 and OED2, with no citations after 1690. But the 2015 revision raised its status to “Now archaic (somewhat rare)”, with four more citations up to the present:
Wouldn’t have expected that in the New York Times Magazine, but there it is.
“Go to” in the Macbeth sense is now labeled “Now archaic and rare” (it had no label in earlier editions), with a last citation from 1922. The definition has also been slightly modified: “Expressing (playful) impatience or dismissiveness, or (mock) disbelief, derision, etc.: ‘get away’.” That’s Stephen’s “get away”; I think an American would not say “get away!” but “get out!” (The OED also has this “get away!” and labels it “chiefly British”.)
Merriam-Webster has both the Bible and Macbeth senses of “go to”, both marked archaic, and in fact they use the Macbeth quote as an illustration. It’s even in the Collegiate (at least, in the 9th ed. from the 1980s, haven’t checked others), so Safire wouldn’t even have needed no fancy OED.
Wouldn’t have expected that in the New York Times Magazine, but there it is.
It’s so odd, and unintelligible to almost all readers, that I suspect a typo or editing error, and Sifton actually wrote “go to it” (which would be unexceptionable). Here’s the article in question (archived).
You could well be right about a typo, maybe the OED should have double-checked with the source.
The revision also added an etymological note: “[Compare Middle Dutch toegaen to set to work, (of a door, etc.) to close, (of the sun) to set (Dutch toegaan), Middle Low German togān to set to work, Middle High German zuo gān (of a door, etc.) to close, (of the sun) to set (German zugehen).] ” They also have the senses for a door and the sun in English, although the one for the sun is Scottish and obsolete. The sense for a door has this:
and then a long gap until
and further examples up to 2000. I’m guessing Caxton’s was translationese, and the same expression was re-invented independently much later. (I’m not sure whether I knew this expression before; it’s probably not something I would say, but it doesn’t seem at all strange, perhaps just because the meaning is obvious.)
I’m guessing Caxton’s was translationese, and the same expression was re-invented independently much later.
Though not as much later as it looks.
Anon, The History of Joshua Trueman Esq. and Miss Peggy Williams. A novel, 1755, p. 26
I stopped there, but one could probably find earlier interdatings (if such a word may be allowed).
That’s “pull to”, not “go to”. The OED has “pull to” from 1673 onward. (Also not something I say myself, but it’s familiar enough.)
Oh, well then I can’t go nearly as far.
John Trotter Brockett, A Glossary of North Country Words… , 1829, p. 69
I don’t think I’ve ever heard “to” in this sense with “go”, “pull”, or any verb, but I’ve read it.
“The door swung to,” sounds like totally ordinary British English. With other verbs it may be less common, but presumably still unremarkable. My hunch is that this usage was never an innovation, and that the sense is common West Germanic. However, that sense of to is much rarer in America.
“The door went to with a clank.“
John Trotter Brockett, A Glossary of North Country Words… , 1829
Good one, and from a source that the OED has cited hundreds of times, too — they must not have thought to search its definitions as well as its headwords.
Brett, yes, it sounds British to me too. The OED has this under to, adv. (not fully revised since 1912) sense 4: “Expressing contact (cf. A.I.5): So as to come close against something; esp. with verbs forming phrases denoting shutting or closing: see the verbs. Now archaic and colloquial.” Some of their quotations:
Another phrasal verb sub-entry is put to, with a sense for doors etc. marked “Now chiefly Scottish and English regional.”
In current German, zu means “closed” (of doors or windows). It’s largely colloquial (rare in writing, but an everyday word in spoken language), and usually predicative, although occasionally you find it used attributively: die zue Tür.
To come to ‘to recover’, current and common, has its own entry in the
OED, and I can’t fit it in any of the listed meanings of adverbial to without squinting.
I wonder now whether this general sense is the to that signals to drop a salute. The usual explanation one finds is that the command is actually “two,” since dropping the hand is the second part of the two-part salute movement. However, I have always had a suspicion that was a folk etymology.
Further to the most recent OED examples posted by ktschwarz, wiktionary offers this from _The Great Gatsby_: “Aware of the loud beating of my own heart I pulled the door to against the increasing rain.” This is offered as illustrating a sense of “to” glossed as “(regionalism) Toward a closed, touching or engaging position.” Which was apparently still extant in 20th century AmEng that’s not obviously offered as “rustic dialect.”
The relevant usage of “go to,” of course, is by contrast often (always?) used intransitively, so any implied movement (involving an unspecified object) is sufficiently abstract and metaphorical it’s hard to fit into an opening-v.-closing paradigm. At least it’s hard for me.
Yes, “pull the door to” sounds perfectly normal to me — not everyday American, but only slightly archaic. I’m pretty sure I heard it from my Ozark relatives back in the day. It is not relevant to “go to” except that both expressions use that odd sense of “to.”
Well, whether both expressions use “that [same] odd sense” is one of my questions. I don’t think “go toward a closed, touching or engaging position” is particularly illuminating gloss of the “go to” expression under discussion. Maybe the simplest approach is to think of at least some of these “VERB to” expressions as phrasal verbs, which rather notoriously tend to be idiomatic, making it difficult to predict which of many possible senses of the preposition-turned-adverb that’s the second component is the one being used.
from a source that the OED has cited hundreds of times, too — they must not have thought to search its definitions as well as its headwords.
They’re probably not as concerned with an “interdating” as with antedatings.
Well, whether both expressions use “that [same] odd sense” is one of my questions.
Fair point. Ignore that sentence of my otherwise impeccable comment.
For “go to (door)” I think the OED *was* concerned with interdatings, since they put in the faint, almost invisible line that signifies “we think it actually wasn’t in use between these dates” between 1481 and 1871. Another example is murder (flock of crows), where they put that line between ?1478 and 1939, with the comment “Apparently revived in the 20th cent.” Or agenbite, where they put it between 1340 and 1866 (James Joyce probably got it from a 19th-century source).
The first edition, in 1900, didn’t have any citations for “go to (door)” past Caxton — it must not have been common enough, at least in print, at the time for them to find any.
JWB: I don’t think “go toward a closed, touching or engaging position” is particularly illuminating gloss of the “go to” expression under discussion.
Huh? Seems the same as in “push to”, “swing to”, etc. to me. Isn’t that exactly what the door/gate/trap is doing in all these examples? (sources omitted for brevity)
And this “to” doesn’t seem to be as odd or British or archaic or regional as I thought, at least in the opinion of all recent professional American dictionaries, which all include this sense without any such note. Merriam-Webster, for example: “adverb. 3a : into contact especially with the frame — used of a door or a window (the door snapped to)”.
@ktscharz: I was talking about the sense of “go to” glossed way back in the OP as “Used in imp. to express disapprobation, remonstrance, protest, or derisive incredulity; —Come, come!”
@ktschwarz: Thanks for mentioning that faint line. I’ll send the “clank” quotation to them.
To me, the difference between the door’s “going to” and all the other door-related uses of “to” is that in all the others you can change “to” to “closed” or “shut”, but “the door went shut with a bang” sounds strange to me.
I read die zune Tür once, with the -n- that is widely used to make the Standardly indeclinable adjectives rosa “pink” and lila “purple” declinable. Both versions, though, are much less widespread than zumachen “close”, zugehen, zufallen “fall shut” etc. etc..
“Come to”, BTW, is zu sich kommen in German; with the reflexive it makes sense…
JWB: OK, yeah, I don’t think the “contact” sense of to is relevant to the Macbeth sense of “go to!”
Norw. Nynorsk/dialectal. lat åt døra* “close the door”. I can’t remember having heard the expression with the “urban” preposition til or the spoken form te.
* Or in the wittiness from my young days in Bergen (said in a broad Western rural accent) Lat åt grinda. Kydne frys. “Close the gate .The cattle are cold.”
Both versions, though, are much less widespread than zumachen “close”, zugehen, zufallen “fall shut” etc. etc..
I guess the reason is that the attributive use is marked as strongly colloquial and uneducated, so people use geschlossen in writing and when speaking in situations where they don’t want to come over as bumpkins. This is not true for the predicative use (die Tür ist zu), which is very frequent.
No, it’s unknown altogether in whole dialect groups. I only know it from reading. And I can talk about rosane & lilane things all day long.
Agreed on the predicative use.
Those are just indeclinable adjectives for me; it’s always rosa and lila, no matter what the gender and number of the noun is. My (very subjective) impression is that people only started using the forms with -n- in the 1980s. When I grew up, nobody used them.
@ulr: they were already around in the 70s when I grew up; but similar to zue etc., strongly marked as colloquial and uneducated.
echoing the letter JC cited, it seems to me that the exhortative “go to” (as in the scottish play) is very much a minced “go to hell” – and its lighter uses closely match the u.s. english exhortative “fuck off” or “get the hell out” (the latter either an extension of or the pre-mincing version of “get out” as an expression of incredulity or/and rejection).
“pull [etc] the door to” is pretty normal to my ear –kinda oldfashioned but not highly marked. i’m more likely, myself, to say “would you pull the door together?”*, and i’m not sure whether that’s an underlying full form or an extension to make an odd use of “to” make more sense.
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* i wouldn’t use that for a window unless it opened on hinges; i might quote the chaucer for a sliding window, but then i wouldn’t extend the “to”.
i’m more likely, myself, to say “would you pull the door together?”
Huh — that’s a new one on me.
@rozele
Perhaps I am confusing “go to” with Hibwrno-English “go away”, but are you sure the intent was not more “what you are saying is unexpected and possibly worrying/upsetting, please say something more”? Compare “come on”, this has a similar form but probably means more like “what you are saying is disappointing, please think it over”.
that’s a new one on me
On me, too. Pull xxx together works only for yourself and the curtains. I suppose possibly for a pair of ranch-sliders.
The general degree of tolerance for indeclinable adjectives varies geographically, too. Lecker seems to be indeclinable in places where it’s actually used, and the natural-history museum in Berlin calls native gold gediegen Gold on labels; neither of these would have occurred to me. (And I’m pretty sure the natural-history museum in Vienna says gediegenes Gold as expected.)
I don’t know about places, but as a person who actually uses the word occasionally, for me it was always declinable, and I can’t think of a reason why it shouldn’t be. It’s a run-of-the-mill Standard German adjective (I don’t understand the phrase “actually used”).
I have seen that usage (not my usage), and it always seemed to be a somewhat archaic trade term used by goldsmiths and the like.
Re indecllnable lecker, I assume that DM refers to usages like this. Google’s AI goes with ulr and tut-tuts that the adjective should be declined in this construction, but it’s idiomatic in colloquial German in the areas I am familiar with (North and Rhineland). It shows up in constructions that are close to predicative / adverbial use, also in e.g., Mama hat heute lecker Rouladen gemacht or Er kocht lecker Mittagessen, or in exclamations like Oh, lecker Bratkartoffeln. At least in the usage I know, lecker isn’t used undeclined in combination with articles.
And I guess DM implies that lecker isn’t native to the South.
Re gediegen, I agree with ulr that gediegen Gold / Silber are a fixed phrase.
@hans
Forget your Bratkartoffeln!
Lecker Rievkooche
https://verliebtinkoeln.com/kartoffelpuffer-rezept-2/
@PP: Doesn’t work – for me, because I don’t like Reibekuchen and generally, because Kölsch lecker corresponds to Standard lecker and leckere.
When Johanna Schopenhauer (the philosopher’s mother) wrote about a visit to Cologne in the 1820s, she found its dialect to be totally incomprehensible to other Germans.
I guess DM implies that lecker isn’t native to the South.
It is not native but, like “tschüss”, the younger generation of Viennese has pretty much adopted it wholeheartedly, or better said simply grew up with that word on television, books and social media. Older Austrians who rail against it are increasingly seen as weird. Sadly “Kartoffel” seems to be replacing “Erdapfel” as well.
Another example of an undeclined adjective is the pronunciation of Warmwasser with stress in the middle. I think these people aren’t saying Warmwasser, they’re saying warm Wasser…
In the 16th/17th century or so, leaving off the endings of neuter adjectives was widespread. Some areas extended that to other genders, and some reportedly reached the English state – adjectives unmarked, adverbs marked by -lich. That would explain a bunch of extant doublets of adjectives with and without -lich.
Kartoffel was already widespread in Viennese mesolect 30 years ago. I guess it’s part of the phenomenon that people think the more exotic word must be the more standard word – northeastern and southwestern Germany have, or had in the mid-20th century at least, mirror-image attitudes to the pair Orange and Apfelsine.
Hallo & tschüss were already pretty common, too – but strictly with people you’re on a first-name basis with, unlike in Berlin for example.
Speaking of 30 years ago: that’s when my baby sister introduced Dapf (sg = pl), now in practically exclusive use by siblings and parents. We’ll see how far that goes.
Pull xxx together works only for yourself and the curtains.
In my house we always drew the curtains in the evening. But I might pull my ragtag collection of rebels together when thinking about launching an uprising.
NB to Kristi Noem: I am not actually thinking of doing such a thing.