281c. It’s the same with my family. Whatever you say , they abandoned Haru.
(2001 East Asia: An International Quarterly [COCA])
d. it was a marathon, he was encyclopedic, he was knowledgeable. Whatever
you say , he gives a great oral examination. (1997 PBS_ Newshour [COCA])
Beginning in the early twentieth century, whatever you say begins to have the
‘acceptance’ reading equivalent to the pragmatic marker whatever ; this is the
dominant meaning of whatever you say in Present- day English:
(38) a. She got to her horse glowing with hope, feeling herself equal to the dubi-
ous enterprise before them. “ Whatever you say honey,” Creed assured her.
(1908 MacGowan, Judith of the Cumberlands [COHA])
b. Why not call it Echo Farm? That’s a good name, and in your case it means
something, you see.” “ Whatever you say , Miss Mercer! Though I’d never
thought of having a name for the place before.” (1914 Stewart, The camp fi re
girls on the march: Bessie King’s test of friendship [COHA])
c. “I wish to be the shepherd.” “ Whatever you say ,” said Joy absently. (1917
Widdemer, The wishing- ring man [COHA])
The nature of the acceptance expressed by whatever you say seems to range,
depending upon context, from enthusiastic agreement, to indifference or bore-
dom, to unwillingness to engage with the other, to begrudging acquiescence.
Finally, another possible source of whatever is whatever you think Adj.
Here, we fi nd a few early examples, but it is uncommon, even in COHA (which
contains only two twentieth- century examples):
(39) a. To which Mr Toots, wholly at a loss to account for these proceedings,
replied with great politeness, ‘Certainly, Captain Gills, whatever you think
proper! ’ (1844 Dickens, Dombey and son [CLMET3.0])
b. “You don’t object to his coming, Lily?” “No; whatever you think best ,
dear.” (1892 Gissing, Denzil Quarrier [CEN])
c. “What shall we do?” asked the Baroness. “ Whatever you think best ,”
answered Sabina, with sudden meekness. (1903 Crawford, The heart of
Rome [CEN])
9.6.3 Accounting for the Rise of Whatever
The rise of the pragmatic marker whatever expressing indifference presents
a bit of a conundrum, as two plausible syntactic sources present themselves.
The fi rst is the general extender or whatever , itself a reduced form of the full
disjunctive clause dating back to the seventeenth century. Bare or whatever
begins to appear in the late nineteenth century and becomes common by the
middle of the twentieth century. At this time, the form reaches its full devel-
opment as a general extender (i.e., a pragmatic marker), expanding in usage
to express more generalized (non- specifi c) sets, eventive meaning, and topic
9.6 Origin and History of Pragmatic Marker Whatever