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Jul 6, 2026
This week’s themeAdverbs This week’s words 
Photo: Eli Reusch Previous week’s theme Eponyms Wordsmith Games
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargThe adverb is the whipping boy of language. When a novel stalls, a poem goes nowhere, or writer’s block plants its heavy feet on the sofa, professional writers often blame the nearest adverb. The thinking seems to go: My manuscript is not moving. Perhaps I should whip out an essay with writerly advice on why no one should ever write slowly. Mark Twain, Stephen King, V.S. Naipaul, Kurt Vonnegut, and a battalion of workshop advice givers have all taken a swing at the poor POS. That is, part of speech, just so we are clear. And, of course, Strunk and White, those two hall monitors of the sentence. Around here, we do not play favorites with any POS. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs: all are children of the same unruly language. This week, we’ll show the adverb a little languagy love. We’ll feature a few adverbs proudly wearing their -ly suffixes, and a few that refuse to conform. Use them in your own writing, but use them judiciously. One can overuse anything, including adverbs, writing advice, and the word judiciously. somewhen
PRONUNCIATION:
(SUHM-(h)wen)
MEANING:
adverb: At some indefinite or unspecified time; sometime.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Old English sum (some) + when, from Old English hwenne. Earliest
documented use: 1297.
NOTES:
Somewhen is the ultimate excuse for procrastinators who refuse
to be pinned down by the linear constraints of a clock. I told my editor
I’d have the revised manuscript over to her somewhen. She told me she’d
pay me somemoney.
USAGE:
“It is fun to know that serious scientists believe the fabulous alternate
realities of the Philip Pullman novels could be accurate descriptions of
reality (for in a multiverse of infinite size and scope there will,
somewhere and somewhen, be a world where a little girl called Lyra
befriends a talking polar bear and where people’s souls take the form
of animal familiars).” Michael Hanlon; Reality Check Required; New Scientist (London, UK); Feb 9, 2008. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological
capacities have advanced faster than our ethics. -Peter Singer,
philosopher, professor of bioethics (b. 6 Jul 1946)
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