etymology - Whatever happened to "what ever" and whenever did it happen?


I am curious to know when whatever, whenever, wherever and whoever first started being used as interrogative words. Merriam-Webster, etymonline and dictionary.com offer no hints. Wikipedia doesn't even mention them as interrogatives, completely ignoring the fact that there are countless books titled Whatever happened to X?. TheFreeDictionary.com points out that



[c]ritics have occasionally objected to the one-word form, but many respected writers have used it



and leaves it at that (well, thanks for nothing).



Answer



From the OED's online entry on the interrogative form of whatever, the earliest entry for the pronoun usage as a single word is from 13—:



13.. Seuyn Sag. (W.) 3514 Son, what may al this noys be,..Whateuer sal it sygnyfy?



Interestingly, their first listed example of the two-word version is from 14—.


The first pronoun usage they have in the modern spelling:



1823 Spirit Publ. Jrnls. 409 Whatever possessed her, I know no more than the child unborn.



For the adjectival usage, the first example is in the two-word form.



c1375 Cursor M. 321 (Fairf.) Quat euer e haly gaste wille, e fader and sone wil tyte fulfil.



The first instance of the single-word form appears in 1456,



1456 SIR G. HAYE Law Arms (S.T.S.) 228 Quhatever sik men dois, it is comperit to the dede of a beste.



and, with the spelling moving through Shakespeare's contraction whatere and Milton's more descriptive Whate're (notice the apostrophe), we see the first modern-spelling usage in Swift's Gulliver's Travels.



1726 SWIFT Gulliver IV. v, It is a Maxim among these Men, That whatever has been done before may legally be done again.



Whatever happened to "what ever" appears to have started happening a long while ago.


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