Evening Journal

"Had Rather" and "Would Rather."

A teacher in one of our eastern schools has prepared a list of words and phrases to be shunned by the youth of the land who wish to grow up in the fear of the laws of language. He has got together a lot of popular vulgar errors and slovenlinesses and done good service in printing them, but one of the idioms he slips up on, as better men have done before him—namely, the student is cautioned against using had rather for would rather and had better for would better. This is all wrong. The idiom I had rather is as old as Chaucer, and in the sixteenth century or thereabouts I had rather was formed by analogy and has held its place in the best usage, written and spoken, ever since. It is a piece of silly modern pedantry and purism to object to it. Of course the argument used against it is that in the sentence I had rather go you are really saying I had go rather than do something else, and this is nonsense. It is true that it seems to lack analytic meaning to the modern language user or hearer, but the answer is that in older days the meaning was there, because the verb have, which is now used mostly as a pale auxiliary, with no more of independent life than the verb be, had then a strong independent life and a far more vigorous signification; hence the idiom, once obviously right, has become securely lodged among the unconscious speech processes of wielders of English and is still right, though harder to prove analytically. We are glad to see on turning to the Century Dictionary that the correct view of the case is set forth, and would rather is not countenanced at all.—Hartford Courant.