Dear Word Detective: How did the phrase “how come” come to mean “why”? How come we needed a longer, less obvious way of saying “why” when we already have the word “why”? Is this a southern colloquialism, or do people everywhere use “how come?” to mean “why”? — Gary Henderson.
Now here’s an interesting coincidence. My wife, Kathy Wollard, just happens to write a weekly newspaper column called “How Come?” in which she answers science questions from inquisitive children (and many adults as well). She is, in fact, even as I write this, hunkered down in the next room, putting the finishing touches on the third “How Come?” book, which will join “How Come?” and “How Come? Planet Earth” (all published by Workman Publishing) in bookstores next fall. And that, kiddies, is how proper product placement is done. Maybe someday she’ll answer a question that has been bothering me for years: Do trees sleep? They must, right? But every time I ask she rolls her eyes and tells me to be quiet.
“How come?” is actually a very interesting phrase. It seems to have been an American invention of the 19th century, although similar forms date back several hundred years in English. The first appearance of “how come” in print dates to 1848, but since that was in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms and the phrase was described as being common at that time, it is almost certainly older. That was, after all, an age when slang and colloquial phrases were usually avoided, not memorialized, in print.
The basic sense of the verb “come” is, of course, “to move towards, approach” or “to arrive.” One of the specialized, and now archaic, meanings of “come” is “to happen,” as in the phrase “to come to pass,” reflecting the idea of a condition, time or event “arriving” (also found in such uses as “Come next summer, Dwayne Junior had better have a job”). “How,” used as an adverb modifying a verb (such as “come”), means basically “by what means?” or “for what reason?”
The final piece of the puzzle of “how come” is the fact that it is actually an abbreviation of a longer phrase, which, although not known with certainty, was probably “how comes it” or “how does it come,” meaning “how did this (event, condition, etc.) happen to be this way.”
“How come?” is, as you note, essentially synonymous with “why?”, but in popular usage it often serves a slightly different function. “How come?” carries a challenging, more emphatic tone than a simple “why?” would convey (“How come Jimmy never has to wash the dishes?”). Unlike “why,” “how come” strongly suggests that the questioner has already developed an opinion on the situation and has decided that something is not proper or fair.
what about in older lit like Shakespeare where people would ask “how came you to …”?
I suspect it became a contraction of “How does it come to be that way?”
I want to know how to use the phrase “and how”. I’ve heard it used, and I have used it before to convey that “I concur”. Am I using it properly?
I was corrected as a child not to use this phrase. If I did, my dad would say “what?” until I responded with “why” instead of “how come”. He used to say “how come” is not a proper word and it is not in the dictionary. To this day I am unable to hear the phrase without cringing. It sounds uneducated. If I could have looked this up 30 years ago I would have pointed it out to my father, but I doubt it would have mattered.
I agree with Bo, it seems to me to be a contraction of “How did it come to pass” or “How did it come to be”. Which is essentially “Why”, but a bit different.
Now, when I hear people say “Why come”, it makes me ill… but maybe it’s a short for of “Why did it come to pass”?
Hmm….
What’s interesting is I find the phrases to have the exact opposite implication. I find “Why?” to be more negative and opinionated, and “How come?” to be gentler and more sympathetic.
A friend stayed home from work recently and I asked “Oh, how come?” because I was wondering if she was sick. To me, asking “Why?” would be more like saying “Um, why’d you do that?!”
“Why”, has moral implications associated with it where as “How” is neutral.
Another interesting issue is that, while “how come” is semantically (nearly) the same as “why,” syntactically it is different.
“Why didn’t you go?” shows usual reverse-word-order question form.
“How come you didn’t go?” uses declarative sentence word order.
This may be another reason why both why and how come are preserved in the language.
In my Korean language class, we learned the phrase:
??? ????? (pronounced: Eodhukay Ohshyusseumnikka).
It literally translates to: How have (you) come?. Korean’s don’t typically use a subject when referring to a person so the word “you” is implied by context. It can also mean “How come?”
The phrase is used in the sense of “How may I help you?” or “What brings you here?”; spoken by a store clerk or the like.
It is interesting that this seems to be similar to the English phrase “How Come?”
In Swedish you can say “hur kommer” which is like “how come or how will”. So it could be just a translation from Norse. We also say “varfor” which means “why” but could translate directly from Swedish as “where for” as in the English: wherefore art thou. As you learn many languages, you see that English has many words that are just translated from other languages. Language always fascinates me!
Personally I feel that:
A question of WHY can be very large in scoop, and a question of HOW COME is more direct. A question of “why” to me is one of not much thought towards an real conclusion towards one answer but of many. While “how come” is asking for a conclusion to one answer. Both generalize a question towards some conclusion of an answer, but it all depends on its packaging and it’s use within that contex and how you as the interpreter, interpret it.