At Large

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Betsy over here in Escondido, California.

I was listening to the news the other day, and they said the suspect was at large.

Now, I think most everybody knows what that means, but why?

Why does at large mean, what did you take it to mean?

At large. Well, we know what it means.

You know, the suspect’s missing or what have you.

But I just thought at large is kind of a strange way to say it when you think about it.

Yeah, kind of.

It’s got a long history that came to us through Latin and French.

There have been a number of different phrases and different eras in Latin and French,

So Old French and Middle French and Norman French,

And then borrowed into English kind of as a legal phrase,

And to mean at liberty.

And all of the different old versions of it in Latin and French

More or less mean not restrained, not fixed to place, not permanently held.

So someone at large means that they are away from any kind of control.

So we talk about suspects at large.

But you can also have people who work for companies, and they can say that they’re vice

President at large, which means that they’re not fixed to any one task or department.

They’re kind of given assignments here and there as needed.

I see.

So large and liberty are sort of related in history.

Is that it?

Yeah.

So it’s not large as in size.

It has large more to do as, I believe it’s related to distance.

Kind of expansive.

Yeah.

In trying to, you know, figure out why we say that, I was trying to think of other things

That are similar.

And the only thing I could think of is by and large.

And then I began thinking about by and large, and I began to wonder if it was by in large

Or by and large.

But I want to know, is by and large connected to at large?

They are connected because they’re part of English and they both contain the word large,

But etymologically they’re distinct and they don’t have any relationship at all.

By and large, as far as I understand, is a nautical term.

It basically means to keep a ship sailing in a direction,

But every once in a while sailing toward the wind,

Or as close as you can get and still maintain forward momentum,

And then kind of sailing off the wind, kind of moving back and forth,

But still generally heading towards your destination.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

That’s great.

So by has a particular meaning in nautical language,

Which is more or less meaning toward or in the general direction of.

So when we say by and large, don’t we mean sort of almost all?

Well, by by.

For the most part.

Yes.

So we might say, well, by and large,

That was a successful campaign that we ran to promote our product, right?

Meaning all in all or more or less.

Generally.

Generally.

Yeah.

And what we’re talking about here, if a ship is sailing by and large, it means it’s not headed in a straight line toward its destination.

It’s a little bit one way.

It’s a little bit the other way.

It’s a little bit one way.

It’s a little bit the other way.

Okay.

But it still gets there.

So they’re not connected at all, but the ship could be at large.

Yeah.

And I don’t even…

Yeah, they’re fleeing.

Yeah.

Right.

Whoever’s on the ship is at large that’s sailing by and large.

Yes.

By and large.

So it’s by and large.

A-N-D.

Okay.

Yeah.

And it’s B-Y.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So it’s B-Y space A-N-D space large.

Okay.

Very good.

Now I know for sure.

I think it gets kind of slurred into by in large.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We do that in English.

We tend to drop that D on and, and it’s sometimes hard to hear.

Thanks for calling, Betsy.

Very good.

Bye-bye.

Bye.