word choice - Alternatives to the common construction "didn't used to"


I am hearing the use of this odd-sounding construction more and more frequently as of late. For example:



I didn't used to smoke.


I didn't used to work for McDonald's.



I was trying to think of alternatives to this phrase but all I could think of was previously:



I didn't previously smoke.


I didn't previously work for McDonald's.



That said, to me, the use of "previously" instead implies an event took place that changed the fact in the statement. In other words, to me, "previously" is more similar to "prior to (something)," whereas "didn't used to" refers to the general past.


Are there any better alternatives to that of which I have already thought?



Answer



I see nothing wrong or odd with the following sentence and its meaning.



I didn't use to smoke



This statement means I was a non-smoker in the past. It implies that today I smoke on a regular basis. When we want to contrast a repeated action in the past that is no longer true in the present, used to, is a perfectly valid construction. Compare the same sentence in the affirmative



I used to smoke



This means I was a smoker in the past, but now I do not smoke. To make the past simple negative form in English use did + infinitive verb


Examples:



I didn't smoked I didn't smoke


He didn't played football. He didn't play football


We didn't went to the match We didn't go to the match



Likewise with used to, the negative form in the past simple is didn't + use to


The difference between didn't use to and didn't used to is not noticeable in speech but this error (and it is an error, I don't care how many instances Google says otherwise) is replicated in writing.


The story is a little different with the second example (corrected)



I didn't use to work for McDonald's.



Here the speaker is saying he didn't work for an extended period for or in a McDonald's restaurant. However, this implies he is working for that company today.



A: Bla, bla, bla... What are you doing now?
B: I work in McDonald's
A: Really? But didn't you leave college with a Bachelor's degree in X?
B: Yeah... Listen I know it sounds weird, I didn't use to work in McDonald's but now I do. It's a long story.



Macmillian Dictionary says:



Used to only exists as a past tense. Questions and negatives are usually formed with 'did' + use to (with no 'd'): Did you use to work here? ♦ We didn't use to earn much. The spelling 'did used to' is sometimes used, but many people think that this is wrong. In formal English, negatives are often formed with used not to:
They used not to allow shops to be open on Sundays. The short forms usen't to and usedn't to are sometimes used, but they sound rather formal and old-fashioned. used for saying what was true or what happened regularly in the past, especially when you want to emphasize that this is not true or does not happen now



  • I used to enjoy gardening, but I don't have time for it now.

  • They always used to ring me and say what they were doing.

  • Where did you use to live before you moved here?

  • I didn't use to like him, but now we're good friends.

  • Customers didn't use to want to shop from home.



If you want to substitute "didn't use to" say never.



I never smoked but now I do


I never worked for McDonald's but now I do



Alternatively, as suggested by @Peter Shor in the comments below



I never used to smoke


I never used to work for McDonald's



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

Does this sentence have too many subjunctives? If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so: Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries. If not, maybe the simplified sent...
Read more

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version. And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer , and it actually was fact... more than a century ago! What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms ) rather than it crawls. Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around? As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks , sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he ...
Read more

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

I often see English notation about time using the " and ' symbols. I have always mistaken about the two, and even their meaning. I'm more used to "01:05:56", for example. How do you represent the hour, minutes, and seconds using the apostrophe and quotes punctuations? Which is for the hour, which is for minutes, and which is for seconds? Is it the common way to write duration of time elapsed? Do they have a special pronunciation? Answer It's not particularly common for expressions of time. It's similar to degrees-minutes-seconds: instead of decimal degrees (38.897212°,-77.036519°) you write (38° 53′ 49.9632″, -77° 2′ 11.4678″). Both are derived from a sexagesimal counting system such as that devised in Ancient Babylon: the single prime represents the first sexagesimal division and the second the next, and so on. 17th-century astronomers used a third division of 1/60th of a second. The advantage of using minute and second symbols for time is that it o...
Read more

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

I've been reading William Manchester's book "American Caesar", which is about Douglas MacArthur, and I found that he uses a strange convention for pluralizing the family name. When talking about the MacArthurs as a whole, he writes MacArthur' with an apostrophe, as in "After the war, the MacArthur' lived in Tokyo while the general was proconsul" (yes, he uses that term to describe him). I have never seen or heard of a rule that would prescribe this. Manchester is a bit old-timey in his style: for example, he also writes "in behalf of" instead of "on behalf of", which is the only one I have ever seen. So perhaps this is similar. Where does he get this apostrophe from? Edit: There seems to be some difficulty finding examples, which is odd. Here is a direct link to a page from Google Books that shows the apostrophe.
Read more

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

This is a phrase I’m particularly confused about, because it’s used often when something is manipulated or changed. For example, sometimes images surface online that are clearly Photoshopped, but people refer to them as “doctored” images. Why use the word “doctored” here? Answer The earliest Google Books match for an instance of doctored in a transitional (or perhaps post-transitional) sense between "amended" and "adulterated" appears in William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire; Including Its Dairy: Together with the Dairy Management of North Wiltshire, and the Management of Orchards and Fruit Liquor, in Herefordshire , volume 2 (1789): Men in general, however, whose palates are set to rough cider, consider the common sweet sort as an effeminate beverage; and rough cider, properly manufactured, is probably the most generous liquor; being deemed more wholesome, to habits in general, than sweet cider:—even when genuine. That which is drank, in the kingd...
Read more

single word requests - What do you call hypothetical inhabitants living on the Moon?

I'm writing a fiction where inhabitants live on the Moon, so I want a name for them. I know that 'venusian' means 'of or relating to the planet Venus', 'martian' means 'of or relating to the planet Mars or its hypothetical inhabitants' and so on. But, after having observed that 'moonian' is not a word, I wonder as to whether there is a term meaning 'of or relating to the Moon or its hypothetical inhabitants'.
Read more