As promised, here’s a quick summary of the (to) no end idiom. In the original post, I asked what people thought of sentences like (1a) and (1b):
(1a) The crank insulted me to no end.
(1b) The crank insulted me no end.
Are they acceptable to you? If so, what do they mean? I’d figured that the answers would be pretty straightforward. But, as it turns out, you readers are a far more diverse lot than I’d ever expected. Thanks to that diversity, it’s now clear that these idioms are themselves far more diverse than I’d expected. The range of views on the matter blindsided me, especially since I still think I hadn’t heard (1b) before a few weeks ago.
A few commenters were in the same camp with me, ignorant of no end. What surprised me is that they were geographically widespread; three were from the U.S. (Alaska, Pacific Northwest, and Mid-Atlantic), but one was from Canada, and one was from Australia. A few were my evil twins, unfamiliar with to no end, or at least preferring no end over it; two from the U.S. and one from Canada. So that’s weird, because I’d sort of suspected that the (1a)/(1b) distinction was one of those Anglo-American differences, but clearly members of both camps share North America. (No Brits preferred to no end over no end, so there could still be some A-A effect.)
But — and I intend no offense to those of you who were mentioned in the preceding paragraph — the really interesting commenters were the ones who considered both (1a) and (1b) to be perfectly good ways of saying different things. Apparently there is a sizable contingent of readers who think that (1a) and (1b) should be paraphrased as (2a) and (2b), respectively:
(2a) The crank insulted me without a goal or without achieving anything.
(2b) The crank insulted me endlessly.
I think that’s the meaning distinction people saw; it’s awfully hard for me to tell since I do not have such a distinction. (I would use for no end to represent the meaning of (2a), which is where I’m getting my paraphrase from.) At least two commenters felt this way, one from the Mid-Atlantic U.S. and one from the British Midlands.
I don’t know that there’s any great insight about usage to draw from this data, expect perhaps the greatest of all: each of us knows next-to-nothing about general English usage. I think of myself as being pretty familiar with American English because I’ve lived in three corners of the country, have associated with the underclass, old money, and the nouveau riche, and have almost managed to figure out what might could means. But I didn’t know anything about the variability in this idiom. This serves as a reminder to would-be prescriptivists: you’d better do some research before you go around telling people what’s right and wrong in language. No matter how much experience you have with the language, it’s always possible that your usage is the odd one out. Don’t trust someone’s prescriptions just because they seem like they know English well. Make sure they’ve done their homework on it.
Or, in this particular case: dismissing either to no end or no end as bad English with just a sentence or two just makes you look foolish.
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February 19, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Rick S
I didn’t comment on the earlier post. I would accept either to mean (2b) in this sentence, though I usually think of to no end meaning the same as to no purpose (2a). In fact, it would still have that meaning in this sentence if there was a slight emphasis on no.
February 20, 2009 at 5:26 pm
The Ridger
One thing that I’ve noticed is that some people, when confronted with two variants, feel there must be two meanings. I’m not sure if that’s happening with me and “to no end/no end”, but I don’t think so. I think it’s the preposition that makes me feel that “to no end” means “to no purpose” or “with no goal”, while “no end” is more clearly a time construction.
June 16, 2010 at 11:25 am
mollymooly
The “to no end” is either mainly American, recently more common, or both. I first encountered “to no end” 5 minutes ago reading this quote from Spots Illustrated. I was unsure if it was an Americanism or a malapropism. A quick Google brought me here.
Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a British publication that tries to give equal weight to American English, only recognises “no end”. There is no discussion at all in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary of English usage
The British National Corpus has 251 instances of “no end”, of which 42 are adverbs in the relevant sense; common collocations include “cheer up”, “improve”, and “worry”. There are 5 instances of “to no end”: 2 are red herrings, 2 are “to no purpose” and only one is the “very much” sense.
July 19, 2010 at 11:00 am
robert smith
I am from Missouri originally and in my town the expression ‘no end’ meant something like ‘seriously’. “He insulted me no end” = “He seriously insulted me” or “I was really insulted.”
“To no end” clearly meant ‘futily’ or ‘to no purpose.”
January 24, 2011 at 8:52 am
Carole Franklin
A friend just wrote. “that pleases me to no end.” I was taken aback since he was talking about something I said. I came searching online and found this. THANK YOU. I think my friend must be one who sees no difference in “no end” and “to no end”. I do. I see it as meaning “to no purpose.” I am originally form Scotland.
March 29, 2012 at 8:16 am
Kate Norris
According to Merriam Webster’s 11th edition (under “end”), the phrase is “no end” and means exceedingly.
March 2, 2013 at 6:39 pm
Warsaw Will
I’m a BrE speaker and had never heard of the ‘to’ version before. I’d just like to make a couple of points, while taking on board your comments about the use of the “to” version.
I find your Google score in the previous post a little strange. I get the following, where for me the interesting point is that the “to” version with “me” is proportionately much higher than for other persons:
“pleased me no end” – 417,000 (to – 601,000)
“pleased him no end” – 2,150,000 (to 541,000)
“pleased her no end” – 661,000 (to 531,000)
“pleased them no end” – 308,000 (to – 73,000)
“pleased us no end” – 106,000 (to – 28,900)
With “cheer up” (more British?), I get:
“cheered me up no end” – 590,000 (to – 189,000)
“cheered him up no end” – 220,000 (to – 55,100)
“cheered us up no end” – 88,100 (to – 5,350)
My second point concerns the noun phrase “no end of” , which for me is closely connected to the adverbial, both of which could be glossed as “a lot, a great deal”
Finally, while the “no end” version is featured in all the online dictionaries I’ve checked (6 British, 3 American) I haven’t found the “to” version in any.
Incidentally British dictionaries seem to have more on this than American ones, with Collins giving several examples from the press.
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/no-end#no-end_1
March 2, 2013 at 6:53 pm
Warsaw Will
This Ngram graph would suggest that the “to” version is relatively recent, appearing in books from the mid 70s, and considerably less prevalent than the “to”-less version, which seems to have taken off in the 1920s or so.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pleased+me+no+end%2Cpleased+me+to+no+end%2Cpleased+him+no+end%2Cpleased+him+to+no+end&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=
Repeating the process for British books brings up a zero score for the “to” versions.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pleased+me+no+end%2Cpleased+me+to+no+end%2Cpleased+him+no+end%2Cpleased+him+to+no+end&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=
For American books the difference is smaller, and again the “to” version is stronger with “me” than with “him”.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pleased+me+no+end%2Cpleased+me+to+no+end%2Cpleased+him+no+end%2Cpleased+him+to+no+end&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=
April 16, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Sheila
Being familiar with both idioms from childhood; (probably due to a lot of reading)
no end is either British or disused/archaic in the US, means a lot/endlessly, as in “we had no end of trouble with this idiom.”
to no end means literally that; to no purpose, uselessly, as in “I researched for days to no end, because the information isn’t available or relevant.”
I’m very annoyed by the conflation of the first with the second, because misuse always confuses me briefly.