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How come " why come"

Posted by Smokey Stover on February 20, 2005

In Reply to: How come or why come posted by R. Berg on February 20, 2005

: : Hi,
: : My friends an I had an argument the other day on whether it is appropriate to use "why come" in sentences where it might sound more appropriate than "how come" .

: : Does anyone know for sure if it is grammatically correct to do that?

: I haven't heard "why come." The traditional phrase is "how come." It makes sense as a shortened form of questions like "How did it come to be that Antarctica is covered with ice?"

I have heard "why come" in the past, although I no longer hear it. I thought at the time that it was a deliberately ungrammatical piece of whimsy, an amalgamation of "why" and "how come." Does anyone know differently? SS

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