American casualism takes hold (again) but isn’t universal
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In reviewing a documentary about TV journalist Mike Wallace, critic Kenneth Turan noted that the film’s director had “gotten ahold of exceptional footage.” That prompted Henry McNulty of Cheshire to ask whether “ahold” was acceptable in standard English. To answer this question, let’s take Mike Wallace’s dig-deep investigative approach and get a hold of some linguistic history.
The noun “hold” appeared in English a thousand years ago and, until about 1850, the concept of getting a grip on something had always been rendered as a two-word phrase, e.g., “Tom got a hold of the blunderbuss.”
But then we Americans, you guessed it, started rendering “a hold” as “ahold.” The first recorded use came in the August, 1850, issue of Graham’s Magazine describing a hero who offered not only rescue but recommendation: “The good sailor who had caught ahold of her when she was fallin’ told her to cheer up.”
“Ahold” really took hold in America during the twentieth century, especially in the works of tough-guy authors. e.g., “Francis said, ‘Take ahold again.’” (Ernest Hemingway, “In Our Time,” 1926); “If you could get ahold of a representative who was a regular guy . . .” (Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead, 1948).
Though “ahold” might sound like a midwestern or southern term, akin to “a-hunting” or “a-coming,” it’s not a regionalism. The Dictionary of American Regional English reports its use in 17 states ranging from New England to the Southwest.
The Brits, with Pecksniffian predictability, have turned up their noses at this shocking Americanism. This expression, they snoot, should be properly rendered as “get a hold of” or the even more Britishy “get hold of.”
But where do we Yanks stand on the propriety of “ahold” today? “A horror!” writes grammarian Patricia O’Conner. “Either it’s two words or it’s simply ‘hold’ (get hold of yourself ).” By contrast, usage expert Brian Garner categorizes “ahold” as “an American casualism” that is “virtually universal but is opposed on cogent grounds by a few linguistic stalwarts.” Both the Merriam-Webster and American Heritage dictionaries include “ahold” in their listings without comment, suggesting they regard it as standard English.
Nevertheless, a Google Ngram search shows that “get a hold of” currently appears in books three times more often than “get ahold of” – strong evidence that we linguistic golfers still can’t claim credit for making “ahold” in one.