from whence they came

[joggerjayne]

Just been looking something up for another thread, and came across this ... on today's BBC history page ...

"Sir George pointed out the rowing boat and explained that one could either use that, or return by the tunnel from whence they came."

But surely "whence" means "from where".

So it is wholly ungrammatical to say ...

"from whence they came"

One should simply say ...

"whence they came"

Well look, this is the BBC ... they should try to get it right.

[fredpuli47]

Strictly ''from whence' is not referring to the tunnel but to the place beyond it, the place reached by going through it

And strictly, return 'by the tunnel whence they came' refers only to the tunnel itself: it means , literally, that they had come from the tunnel ,they might have started on this side of it,the exit side and never have come through it , they might have arrived by boat from wherever they came from.

But 'from whence' tells us that the speaker is not saying they may return to the tunnel itself ('whence') but return to wherever they came from,('from whence') by means of the tunnel.

Pedantic, but that's the BBC !

[joggerjayne]

fredpuli47, I agree with that ...

... and it suggests that, not only was the use of "from whence" ungrammatical ...

... but, also, that the words "by the tunnel" should have been contained within commas.

[Quizmonster]

Fowler's Modern English Usage says re the hence, whence, thence, henceforth etc word-group..."The most stubborn survivor of this set of phrases is from whence, a phrase with a long and distinguished history."
And that it certainly has. Shakespeare was happy to use it, as were Dryden, Goldsmith, Dickens, Swinburne et al.

Yes, the from is generally redundant and the phrase as a whole rather old-fashioned, but what the hey! I can't think of any good reason to dismiss it. If Coleridge can write...
"Alone, alone, all all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea"...
I'm sure Sir George was perfectly free to say from whence!

[fredpuli47]

Those youngsters at Collins note " the expression 'from whence' should be avoided, since 'whence' already means 'from which place' : " the tradition whence (not 'from whence' ) such ideas flowed ".Fine, but not an answer to the analysis I gave of the example quoted by joggerjayne.Collins' example does indeed have the 'from' as redundant.
That said, there's nothing wrong with using 'from' as emphasis anyway, and also QM gives a good argument , based on precedent, for retaining it.

[Quizmonster]

Thanks for that, Fred. Since my earlier answer, I have consulted Michael Quinion's Worldwidewords website - always a reliable source - and he, too, sees the phrase as an idiom nowadays. Consequently, having been around for the best part of a millennium, it has no need to fit any parameters set out by grammarians or pedants.