On Tomorrow

* I mean spoken prevalence.

I was a bit sceptical about jayles Ngram idea, after all there are perfectly standard incidences of 'on tomorrow', eg: 'it depends on tomorrow', 'reckoning on tomorrow', for example, and I assumed all the early instances would be of that nature, especially as many commenters here and on other forums have remarked that 'on tomorrow' is quite a recent phenomenon.

But in fact there are quite a few examples from the early nineteenth century, many of them from state legislatures - is this a special kind of legal English, or am I missing something?

"Mr. Keller gave notice, that on tomorrow he would ask leave to bring in a bill to incorporate the stockholders of the Bank of Circleville", Ohio House of Representatives 1816

"Which was read the first time, and passed to a second reading on tomorrow.", Indiana House of Representatives 1836

"Mr. Read gave notice that he will on tomorrow or next day introduce a bill in relation to the Florida peninsula and Jacksonville and the Union Rail Road companies", Florida Legislative Council 1836

"Mr. Ruttan gives notice that he will, on tomorrow, move that a select committee of five members be appointed to inquire ..." Upper Canada House of Assembly 1839

"On motion of Mr. Morris, Ordered, That the committee of Privileges and Elections take into consideration on tomorrow, the contested election from the county of Patrick." Virginia House of Delegates 1830

"On tomorrow eleven more are to receive the ordinance", The Religious Intelligencer 1822

Not all are from America:

"One of the most remarkable features of acute rheumatism is this metastasis of inflammation ; you have one joint attacked to-day, on tomorrow it will be quite free from disease", London Medical and Surgical Journal, 1833

"Mr. Speaker then put the question, which was agreed to — " that on tomorrow se'night the house resolve itself into a committee of the whole house, to take into consideration the state in □which the impeachment of Warren Hastings, esq. late ...", The Town and Country Magazine, London, 1790

And a couple from The University Magazine, published in Dublin (there's a suggestion at Grammarphobia that it could also be Irish)

"On to-morrow I will brave the storm, whether successfully or not, is doubtful"

"Tell Gerard Douw ... that Minheer Vandehousen, of Rotterdam, wishes to speak with him on to-morrow evening at this hour"

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22on+tomorrow%22&lr=lang_en&sa=X&ei=DlDYUvzELOyw7Abu14HIDg&ved=0CCgQpwUoBA&source=lnt&tbs=lr%3Alang_1en%2Ccdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F1700%2Ccd_max%3A12%2F31%2F1860&tbm=bks

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2014/01/random-thoughts-about-on-tomorrow.html

out of the mouths of some co-workers:

on today
on tomorrow
on below
on lunch
on later
on soon
speak on to
on next week
she do dat on to you?
on and on

I work in a call center where I hear my co-workers use the words ax, on tomorrow and I have a ppointment rather than an appointment on tomorrow..lol. I'm from CT and never heard that until I moved below the Mason-Dixon.

We have some people that say on tomorrow where I work and it drives me nuts! We are teachers! I think it is from a location in the US that speaks like that, but it is not the south, We are in Texas and I have never heard it until this school year....

@momofthree1999 - Maybe not in your part of the South, but comments on the web and here would certainly suggest it's centred on Georgia and Louisiana. Book evidence would add Maryland and South Carolina, and at least one writer who uses it grew up in French Town, Houston, which was originally populated by creoles from Louisiana.

Most of the examples I found at Google Books were by writers strongly expressing their Christian faith. I don't know if that's just normal for (black) people from the South, but it does seem a very high proportion. Which makes me wonder if this an expression that has been picked up at church, church seeming to have been a common factor in a few of the earlier comments.

on tomorrow means.... if something is said to b tmw as the end of t ... for eg... am hvng a feast these days and tmw s said to b end of t ..eg ..thoothoor parish celebrates St.Agathammal feast on tomorrow, 5th Feb 2014.

To me "on tomorrow" does sound strange, especially in American English where prepositions and conjunctions do sometimes seem to be out of favour and are frequently dropped.
eg: "We will have a meeting Monday" instead of "We will have a meeting on Monday" or "We will have a meeting next Monday".

@Hairy Scot,

I think the exclusion of the preposition is that Monday can act adverbially (which is what it is doing here).

Hadn't thought of it that way, but I must confess I do have my doubts.
Mind you, I am a pedantic old sceptic. :-))

@Hairy Scot,

Well, Monday is answering the adverbial question of "when". It fits into:

We went shopping today.
I went shopping yesterday.
I went to the story a few days ago (or ereyesterday [the day before yesterday]).

And, like some adverbs, can be relocated to the front of the sentence:

Today, I went shopping.
Yesterday, I went shopping.
A few days ago/ereyesterday, I went shopping.
Next Monday, we will have a meeting.

@Jasper

I'm not saying your explanation is incorrect.
It's just that although there is nothing grammatically wrong with "we have a meeting Monday" or "on tomorrow .................." both sound strange to me.

Keying in; Monday_* , _ADP_Monday to the ngram view suggests plain adverb is a minority usage.

@jayles
I'm probably being a little thick today but could you please expand on your last post?
Does it mean that "We have a meeting on Monday" is more common than "We have a meeting Monday"

@Hairy Scot,

Um, yeah, sorry about that. After I had just posted the comment, I reflected on it and realized how much like an ass I sounded. Anyway, I find "on tomorrow" strange sounding.

Jayles,

What is ADP? All I can think of is adpositional phrase or adposition.

@HS+J a bit criyptic, yes; mea culpa. Go to:

books.google.com/ngrams

copy and paste in :

Monday_*,_ADP_ Monday,monday_*

and you will get a graph breaking down the book usage of monday by part of speech.
_ADP_ stands for adposition ie prepostion or postposition -see "About Ngram Viewer

Also you need to change the timespan to 1800 to 2008 to get ADP results

@jayles - the problem with that is that Monday can be used in all sorts of ways as a noun, not just in expressions such as I'll see you (on) Monday - using your formula, the results for British books and American books are pretty similar, whereas in practice that's obviously not the case.

Here are a couple of different ways of doing it:

you (on) Monday
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=you+on+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cyou+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cyou+on+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cyou+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cyou%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cyou%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cyou%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cyou%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

takes place (on) Monday
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=takes+place+on+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Ctakes+place+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Ctakes+place+on+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Ctakes+place+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctakes%20place%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctakes%20place%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctakes%20place%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

starts (on) Monday
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=starts+on+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cstarts+Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%2Cstarts+on+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%2Cstarts+Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cstarts%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstarts%20Monday%3Aeng_us_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstarts%20on%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstarts%20Monday%3Aeng_gb_2012%3B%2Cc0

This is so true! I have experienced this many times and I hear it almost daily. I have coworkers and friends who always say "on yesterday, tomorrow, today, etc." It drives me crazy but most of them are actually educated. For example, people will say "I am glad God brought us here to worship on tonight." I have also heard people say things like "I enjoyed speaking with you on yesterday." I was very confused the first time I heard this and actually brought it up to my coworker as I was helping her write a letter as a follow up to a job interview. She seemed very confused as to why anything was wrong with the phrase. I am from Kansas and I have only heard people say this since moving to Tennessee.

I have never heard "on tomorrow." I have, however, heard "on the morrow" a few times when someone was just playing with the language....which I do myself to a very large extent. :)

In our metro-Atlanta school, the Caucasian teachers do not use the expression "on tomorrow." I mention this only because I saw a commenter earlier who said this as well. I don't know if it is ethnic in origin or regional, but as a native Southerner, I never heard it in my entire life until I moved closer to Atlanta. We didn't use it in Mississippi, nor did we use it in North Georgia.

I have lived in Texas for 38 years, about half of that time in South Texas and half in Dallas. It's been only during the past several years that I have been hearing/reading "on" attached to "yesterday", "today", "tomorrow", "last month", "next week", etc. It seems to be only African-American individuals, regardless of educational level, who present this usage. I am annoyed by what I consider poor use of the English language and wonder why some people resort to it.

I live in a suburb of Dallas and work as an Educator. I hear this expression often, mostly from African-Americans. It sounds wrong to me and it makes me cringe but ... This isn't common practice in my household!

I live in Louisiana and started noticing this phrase about a year ago. I have only heard it spoken by black people, including professionals . . .such as a journalist. I do not see how pointing this out is racist. It is what it is. If it is a southern black thing, so be it.

@Ash78 - As a matter of interest, "where do you stay?" (for "where do live?") is very common in Scotland.

For the past decade, I have been receiving emails bi-weekly from the same secretary.... She keeps using the preposition "on" in front of "tomorrow". I noticed it long time ago but I just googled it today.

Dear all,


Please be reminded that the Weekly Meeting will be held on tomorrow, 11 September 2015 (Friday) at 2:00 p.m. in Room xx.

Thank you for your kind attention.


Regards,
xxx

We may not be used to hearing it, and we may not like the way it sounds, but grammatically there is nothing wrong with it. "Tomorrow" is a noun, the object of the prepositional phrase "on tomorrow." The entire prepositional phrase is adverbial, but the word "tomorrow" by itself is a noun. Whether we say or write "on" or not, structurally it is there.

I live in the South and have heard this quite frequently. Funnily enough, the speakers who engage in this linguistic homicide are from the NORTH!

I moved to Houston, TX and I have heard it many times, but only in the African American community.

Thank you for this reference. As others have said, I have mostly heard this as Black usage in the South and find it a charming idiom, but I needed a discussion to reference about why I would leave "on" out when transcribing for reports.

CONVERSATE IS SLANG. Recently I was corrected that the word is, in fact, in the dictionary, though it is not correct English, and it is considered slang. The correct English word is "converse" which is less to pronounce. Many feel those who use "conversate" are less than literate and not well educated.

Wow, this convo has been going on for 9 years! As someone who has lived on the west coast, Texas, NY and VA, I can tell you that I’ve ONLY heard “on today/tomorrow” in Virginia. I work as a supervisor in a call center and review calls for analysis and hear it quite often. It seems to be a southeastern thing and not northeastern.

“Axe” instead of “ask” is NOT just a cultural thing. It was heavily used in NY by all cultures and I hear it in VA as well. I’ve heard it used by folks from Massachusetts, too.

It irks me, but who cares? I am a mutt when it comes to dialect so who am I to talk? (Pun intended) From “fuggedabowdit” to “I know y’all ain’t gonna..” folks never can tell where I’m from. I’m totally okay with that. ????

I found this forum as a result watching Bible Study from my local church on TV with my wife, I finally asked her if she ever noticed “church folk” while speaking in church use the phrase ‘On Today’ or ‘On Tomorrow’ but the same people don’t phrase it that way anyplace else?
It’s been a curiosity to me for some time but I’d never inquired aloud about it. I’m no closer to an answer but I’m relieved I’m not the only one to wonder.

My posts are not getting published. They don't reply email either.

It drives me crazy. It's spreading! Head for the hills!!!

I found this on etymologyonline.com:

tomorrow (adv.)
mid-13c., to morewe, from Old English to morgenne "on (the) morrow," from to "at, on" (see to) + morgenne, dative of morgen "morning" (see morn, also morrow). As a noun from late 14c. Written as two words until 16c., then as to-morrow until early 20c.
__
I wondered if to-morrow derived from the Irish tendency to pronounce "th" as "t" or "d" - for example thirty three sounds like "tirty tree." Then I realized that the thought only occurred to me because I'm a little obsessed with dialects from the south of Ireland.

It’s definitely a southeastern southern black thing. It’s even used by newscasters in SE Georgia. The first time I heard it was in a summer English class at an HBC from a professor with a PHD. I explained to her that if she needed to include the word “on”, the correct use would be “On the Morrow”, not on tomorrow. She told me I was incorrect that she spoke perfect English! I withdrew from the class that same day!

I am a native North Carolinian, and I have NEVER used this phrase. I am beginning to hear it used a lot too, but it's the younger generation who uses it. I am also noticing people saying, "I church with them" meaning, I attend church with them. Another one that bothers me is "I am excited for the party". The party cannot be excited, so I'm not sure how you can be excited "for" it. You can be excited about it or you can be excited for your sister who will be attending the party.