I don't know if you've noticed, but the word "beyond" has acquired a new function recently. It has always been an adverb, meaning "farther away, on the other side", and is related to the now mostly defunct word "yon".
But in the last few years it has taken on a different adverbial function: modifying and intensifying adjectives, especially positive ones like "happy", "excited", "beautiful", and "thrilled", although I have recently seen "beyond insane" and "beyond jealous", but the winner seems to be "beyond angry", as in the following (keep scrolling down after the chart, as there's a bit of a gap before the post continues):
Here is the earliest example I could find on Google Books, from 1976 (you can thank me later, Oxford English Dictionary).
The Man who Loved Beauty - Page 6
books.google.com/books?isbn=0060135840
Leonard W. Robinson - 1976 - Snippet view - More editions
I
had turned, in a kind of slow dreamlike turn, and there was the goddess
herself, Zeus's wife, standing beside me in the flesh. And she was beyond beautiful. She was Beauty itself. from 1983
Double Love - Page 11
books.google.com/books?isbn=0440422620
Kate
William, Francine Pascal - 1983 -
"And
now she was beyond happy that she'd made the decision to keep
it to herself. Todd and Jessica. It makes perfect sense, Liz thought.
The star of the football team would go for the the captain of the
cheerleading squad.."
If it weren't for the 1976 quotation above, I would therefore wonder whether this usage started in Valley Girl slang, if the authors were making a conscious effort to emulate the usage of their protagonists.
I also found this early one for "beyond angry":
Business as Usual - Page 179
books.google.com/books?isbn=0671536907
Linda
Wisdom - 1984 - Snippet view - More
editions
No,
she was
beyond angry.
From the time Casey had walked out of the house until Kate's arrival,
Drew had had plenty of hours to think over Casey's words. The tears
had dried up, the trembling lower lip stiffened, the sniffing
silenced and ...
What
other adjectives have you noticed that are modified by “beyond”?
Let me know in the comments.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteIt's been my feeling that "beyond" could be used with virtually any adjective (and ... beyond!), in order to convey that the adjective/etc. thus modified is somehow not a match (i.e., it is surpassed) by the thing it tries to describe.
For example: "It is beyond shameful", or "Their shamelessness is beyond belief" etc.
It's something else I needed to ask, with your permission:
""Beyond takes on new adverbial function", it would probably have gone beyond viral.
What other adjectives have you noticed that are modified by “beyond”?"
I was going to ask about the first use of "beyond" in my quote above: should it not be written between quotes, because it is about the word itself, it's not the word "beyond" as part of communication.
Then I noticed you put it between quotes in your next paragraph, in possible confirmation to my objection. It reminded me, however, of the fact that I don't really know the rules for quoting, when quotes already exist in the quoted text ...
I once asked a Linguistics professor about my developing an intuition for English. I was assured repeatedly, persistently, almost aggressively that I stood no chance: one is born with that (if I understood that well, of course).
Regretfully, I wasn't convinced. and, in any case, I have nothing better than intuition to rely on, in most cases.
Thank you.