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Mind your language

That annoying ‘likely’ is more old-fashioned than American

And Jane Austen used ‘sure’ as an emphatic yes

14 February 2015

9:00 AM

14 February 2015

9:00 AM

What, asks Christian Major of Bromley, Kent, do I think of ‘this new, I assume American, fad for using the word likely as an adverb’, as in the great Taki’s remark that Alan Turing ‘likely won the war’ (Spectator, Letters, 31 January)? Well, I would most likely not use it in exactly that way, although you’ll have noticed that I have just done so slightly differently.

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