WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2020 -
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eftsoons
[ eft-soonz ]
adverb
Archaic.
soon after.
WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF EFTSOONS?
For some of us, our first (and only) encounter with eftsoons is in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), line 12, to be exact (if you get that far): “Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!” Eftsoons his hand dropt he.” Eftsoons (also eftsoon), a very rare word, is a compound of the archaic adverb eft “again, a second time” and the adverb soon, expanded by the adverbial genitive -s (as in backwards and forwards). Eftsoons entered English before 1000.
HOW IS EFTSOONS USED?
Eftsoons he made known his wants to the churl behind the desk, who was named Gogyryan. And thus he spake: “Any rooms?”
ROBERT BENCHLEY, "SUPPRESSING 'JURGEN,'" LOVE CONQUERS ALL, 1922
I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snail that crept out of her shell was turned eftsoons into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a stool to sit on disdaining her own house, so the traveller that straggleth from his own country is in short time transformed into so monstrous a shape that he is fain to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can, not where he would.
JOHN LYLY, EUPHES AND HIS ENGLAND, 1580, EDITED BY LEAH SCRAGG, 2003