Here, there, and where are a wonderful trio of words, and they, along with some of their rather less familiar cousins, form some of the coolest parallel structures in the English language.
These words are used to help establish the basic relationship in physical space between the speaker and the object(s) to which he refers, or the audience whom he addresses. Within this group of words, we have three primary classifications of space:
- subjective, definite space — that of the speaker (here)
- objective, definite space — different from that of the speaker (there)
- indefinite space (where)
Note that although here and there refer to some definite space, the actual definition is left open to context and is typically implicit. Here can mean the same room as the speaker, the same town or city, or the same country. And while these words generally refer to physical location, they can also have more abstract references. For example, if one were a long-standing employee of a particular company, one could say, “I’ve been working here for many years,” even though the company might have changed its location during that period.
The parallelism to be noted is with the words this, that, and what, respectively:
| here | at/in this place |
|---|---|
| there | at/in that place |
| where | at/in what place |
Of course, in the time before one is at or in a place (as well as in the time afterwards), one is not in that place. While very modern English generally uses the same three words to express the concept of coming and going, archaic usage reserves two additional triplets for these purposes: one for to and one for from. The words in these groups are constructed from the forms -ither and -ence respectively. Now this is where the fun begins. Take the initial consonants of our modern general-use words (h-, th-, and wh-), and combine them with the forms mentioned above, and you have exactly the six additional, archaic words: hither, thither, whither, hence, thence, and whence.
The first three of these are pretty much completely dead, but the last three do occasionally crop up in current usage, especially hence, where it is usually taken to mean and so or therefore. This is perfectly acceptable, and derives naturally from the extension of place to a state of being or condition. For example, the sentence “I dropped my glasses, hence I couldn’t read the sign.” could be thought of as meaning, “I dropped my glasses, and, from this condition, I couldn’t read the sign.”
Putting it all together, we have:
| case | prefix | object | at/in -ere |
to -ither |
from -ence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| subjective, definite | h- | this | here | hither | hence |
| objective, definite | th- | that | there | thither | thence |
| indefinite | wh- | what | where | whither | whence |
Where is the book at, asshole?
From the above discussion, it should become immediately evident why a sentence such as “Where is the book at?” is considered substandard usage. It has nothing to do with the supposed “rule” that one should never end a sentence with a preposition; it’s not so much incorrect as redundant, literally equivalent to asking “At what place is the book at?” If you keep in mind the precise definition of the word, it becomes a lot easier to avoid this mistake, especially if you remember the parallels with the other words in the same group. For example, one response to this question might be to observe that the book was in a definite place, but you probably would not answer, “The book is at here.”