| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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2. Style: Parallelism, Passives, Redundancy, and Wordiness
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| § 19. from whence |
| Send that dish back from whence it came! A dyspeptic king might say that, but if uttered by a patron in most restaurants, it would be hard not to view it as anything but a joke. Whence, like thence, usually adds an archaic or highly formal tone to the passage in which it is used. It’s great for creating an air of mock formality too. | 1 |
| Granting the king his royal license for formality to say from whence it came, would he then be open to criticism for redundancy? Language critics have attacked the construction from whence as redundant since the 18th century, and it is true that whence itself incorporates the sense of from, as in a remote village, whence little news reached the wider world. But from whence has been used steadily by reputable writers since the 14th century, most notably in the King James Bible: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” (Psalm 121). It is hard to label as incorrect a construction with such a respectable record of usage. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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