{"id":184,"date":"2004-04-21T11:28:53","date_gmt":"2004-04-21T15:28:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/04\/21\/blow-ye-winds\/"},"modified":"2004-04-21T11:28:53","modified_gmt":"2004-04-21T15:28:53","slug":"blow-ye-winds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/04\/21\/blow-ye-winds\/","title":{"rendered":"Blow ye winds"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
string<\/b><\/td>\n# hits<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worse comes to worse”<\/td>\n10,200<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worst comes to worst”<\/td>\n6,640<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worse comes to worst”<\/td>\n3,570<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worse come to worse”<\/td>\n404<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worst comes to worse”<\/td>\n404<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worst come to worst”<\/td>\n246<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worse come to worst”<\/td>\n66<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
“if worst come to worse”<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Personally I prefer the third version. It’s logical, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with subjunctive schmanciness like the seventh one seems to. Some people argue from the presence in Motteaux’s Quixote, and in Middleton, of “the worst comes to the worst” that the second is longstandingly usual. None of these people that I saw actually cite chapter or verse of either, though. And they’re all “famous quotation” sites and whatever (that is to say, credulous flapjaws), so it seems possible to me that Motteaux & Middleton’d’ve meant it more along the lines of “the harder they come, the harder they fall”. It’s too bad that it’s utterly impossible forever to tell how they used it.<\/p>\n

Some of the “come” ones seem subjunctive and some seem to be AAVE-style s-dropping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

string # hits “if worse comes to worse” 10,200 “if worst comes to worst” 6,640 “if worse comes to worst” 3,570 “if worse come to worse” 404 “if worst comes to worse” 404 “if worst come to worst” 246 “if worse come to worst” 66 “if worst come to worse” 6 Personally I prefer the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}