everwhere. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

everwhere

SYLLABICATION:	ev·er·where
PRONUNCIATION:	vr-hwâr, -wâr
ADVERB:	Chiefly Southern U.S. 1. Everywhere. 2. Wherever.
REGIONAL NOTE:	Inversion—the reversal of the two halves of a compound word—is a common process in the dialects of the southern Appalachians and the Ozarks. It affects a number of indefinite pronouns (whichever, whatever, whoever) ending in –ever, yielding everwhich, everwhat, and everwho. The commonly occurring everwhere (especially common in Texas) can be an example of inversion when it means “wherever” but illustrates elision of an unstressed syllable in its meaning “everywhere.” Other examples of Southern inversion cited by Craig M. Carver in American Regional Dialects are peckerwood, hoppergrass, doll-baby, tie-tongued, doghanged (meaning “hangdog”), and right-out (“outright”).


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.