Quote:
Originally Posted by pshrynk
My sixth grade teacher told us that nowhere started out as no where, morphed to no-where and on to nowhere. She also said that eventually no one would become no-one and thence to noone. This as a lesson in the flexibility of the English language.
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English certainly does tend to lose hyphens over time. Eg, if you read Dickens or other 19th century authors, you'll see that words like "to-day", "to-morrow", "good-bye", and many others were always hyphenated. I don't think too many people would use hyphens in those words these days - it's just "today", "tomorrow" and "goodbye".