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Education & Reference by Anonymous 2018-05-27 17:42:40
Social Science
Isn't "of course" such a weird saying?
5 answers
It makes no sense to me. I know that it basically means yes but how did we even come up with this saying??
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Anonymous
No more weird than a hundred other expressions which are used in everyday speech in English.
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Anonymous
It's not an exclusively English saying, and no more weird than 'natürlich' (German: naturally/of course) or 'bien sûr' (French: of course).
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Anonymous
From literal meaning "of the ordinary course of events". The oldest attestation as "of course" is from the 1540s; the form "by course" (then spelled "bi cours") dates to about 1300 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/of_course
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Anonymous
No, not really.
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Anonymous
You could easily look up the history of this phrase in a good dictionary such as the OED.