Below, we will look at five words in modern English. Some are rare, even nearly archaic, while others are not. They are:
- Mustn’t
- Must’ve
- Needn’t
- Aloud
- Must
We can examine each one, consider its meaning, and then see what has replaced it. As an aside, no dictionaries appear to have fully caught up with this trend in English yet.
The word mustn’t has been replaced in many contexts by shouldn’t. Think of the last time you used mustn’t—which may be never—and substitute shouldn’t. You will immediately recognize that shouldn’t sounds familiar and common. I have heard mustn’t mainly in films dating from the 1930s, 1940s, and perhaps the 1950s. By the 1960s, use of this contraction for must not had become rare.
Oddly enough, the phrase must not remains common in directions supplied with manufactured products. Look at a bottle of pills or the assembly instructions for a manufactured item, and you are likely to find it. The words mustn’t and shouldn’t are close in lexical meaning, but they differ slightly. The former is prescriptive, while the latter is normative. This helps explain why must not is used to tell consumers the proper way to handle manufactured products. The word shouldn’t indicates what is right to do and therefore concerns what ought to be. Incidentally, ought is closely related in meaning to should.
Why was there a gradual move away from mustn’t toward shouldn’t in colloquial English? It may be that mustn’t is somewhat more difficult to pronounce than shouldn’t. That is, of course, a subjective observation. Still, mustn’t contains two nasal sounds in close succession: the m and the n’t. Producing those sounds may require a slightly more complex movement of the mouth. Whatever the reason for its decline, mustn’t is rarely heard in common American speech today.
The word must’ve, however, is neither rare nor archaic. I use it routinely in speech, and so do many other speakers. For example:
Why didn’t I receive my renewal notice? Sir, our renewal department must’ve forgotten to schedule your renewal plan.
You hear must’ve frequently, but its negative relative, mustn’t, very little. This is odd, but not entirely surprising. Should’ve is not as closely related in meaning to must’ve as shouldn’t is to mustn’t. In colloquial speech, must’ve is no longer imperative. It functions as an inference about what is likely to have happened. It means something like this is probably what occurred. By contrast, mustn’t remains imperative.
This may help explain why mustn’t is being displaced by the more normative shouldn’t. Cultural changes in the way English-speaking people interact may also play a role. Speakers often shy away from telling others what they must do and prefer to say what they should do. Whatever the explanation, mustn’t appears to be on its last legs. When was the last time anyone said mustn’t to you in ordinary conversation?
Needn’t is increasingly being replaced by don’t have to in modern English. We still hear needn’t occasionally, perhaps in formal speech or classroom instruction. Yet you are far more likely to respond with don’t have to when asked a question such as:
Would you like me to send you an email copy of the refund we will process to your account?
No, you don’t have to.
You could instead say, No, you needn’t do that. Since contractions are synchronic simplifications of speech, however, you would be even less likely to say, No, you need not do that.
The decline of needn’t appears to be occurring even among speakers of British English, judging from my conversations with them. Why? Again, I can only speculate. The word contains two nasalized n consonants and may seem more difficult to enunciate than the phrase don’t have to. I admit that this is not a rigorous linguistic explanation, and I do not claim to know exactly why poor little needn’t is evanescing. But it is.
Now we come to our penultimate candidate for extinction: aloud. This word is increasingly being replaced by the phrase out loud. We all know the ubiquitous LOL in text messaging, but I believe the replacement of aloud by out loud began well before the invention of the cell phone.
The two expressions are synonymous. Interestingly, aloud requires less linguistic effort to pronounce than out loud: one word rather than two. Why, then, would one replace the other? I suspect that the growing use of out in a wide range of common expressions played a role. We have phrases such as get out, knock out, way out, get outta here, and outta this world. It was perhaps a natural step for out loud to emerge and gradually supplant aloud.
The use of must as an intensifier rather than a simple imperative has also become common in spoken English. Consider this sentence:
You must know that this kind of profanity is not permitted at this company, either on the phone or in conversation.
Here, must is not functioning merely as a command. Although it retains an element of compulsion, it primarily stresses a point. The use of must to intensify an idea or thought is quite common. It resembles the use of the verb love as an intensifier. Here are some familiar examples:
I must see this movie now that you’ve told me about it.
This is a must-see!
I just love nut-crunch ice cream.
We must begin to address our lack of concern about water pollution.
The last example may again seem imperative, but it lies near the boundary between command and intensification. It could be interpreted either way.
There you have it: my view of our beautiful, evolving language.
Robleh Wais