974 Modern English Only and If Only
4.1 Introduction
In Present- day English, only is typically used as an adjective (e.g., the only
reason ) or a focusing adverb (e.g., only once ). However, it also functions as a
conjunction or conjunctive adverb,^1 as noted in the OED (s.v. only , adv., conj.
and prep., def. B) and illustrated by the following examples from secondary
sources:
(1) a. He makes good resolutions, only he never keeps them (Curme 1931 : 167)
b. Do what you like, only don’t miss the train (Williams 1895 : 131)
c. He is a very nice man, only he talks too much (Jespersen 1949 : 95)
d. He wants to go, only he can’t ( Longman dictionary of contemporary usage
[ Longman ]: s.v. only^3 conj. infml)
e. She wants to go, only she hasn’t enough money (Nevalainen 1991 : 51)
f. Rhododendron time in Seattle is fairly spectacular, only I can’t think when rho-
dodendrons are in bloom (1946 White, Letter, 23 June [ Webster’s : s.v. only ])
g. ... they were right enough in a way, only they failed to understand that the
choice had already been made (1954 Howe and Greenberg, New Republic 9
Aug. [ Webster’s : s.v. only ])
h. They come from the same town in Germany. Only they didn’t know each
other then (1960 Barry, The television playwright , p. 326 [Yang 1996 : 5])
i. ... they were getting plenty of notice of German intentions and preparations.
Only , they failed to heed them (1984 Shirer, The nightmare years [ Webster’s ,
s.v. only ])
j. Nosy cow, I’d fl ick her the fi nger only she’s too stuck up to know what it
means (2001 Glazebrook, Madolescents 212 [OED])
An examination of only in contemporary corpora reveals that focusing uses of
only predominate, but conjunctive uses are not uncommon:
1 On the syntactic status of only in this use, see Quirk et al. ( 1985 : 644, 646, 1103). In a detailed
examination of this question, Yang ( 1996 ) fi nds that in respect to behavioral characteristics,
only falls between but and for, so that ; that is, only is more like a coordinating than a subordinat-
ing conjunction.