etymology - How did 'anyway' become 'anyways,' anyway?


All of the time I see people use these two words synonymously. For example:



Why did he move there anyway?



Versus:



Why did he move there anyways?



I always assumed that there was once just the word anyway that one day had an S added to the end for some reason. Is this assumption correct? What morphological process enables this to happen?



Answer



I've always thought the addition of the S was just an affectation. Slang usage.


People use laters/laterz online a lot in a similar way. There are other variants seen for anyhow, anyhoo is quite popular, spoken and written.


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