In the 1990s, an editor returned one of my articles with a correction. She replaced over with more than in the sentence "Over 1,500 students attend that high school." Even three decades ago, over was in use by pretty much everyone in such contexts. Grateful that my editor accepted my article for publication, I decided not to argue with her over this small point. I did not want to tell her that over has been in use in the English lexicon for more than a millennium.
Grammatical purists seem pleased to put speakers and writers in a linguistic straitjacket with rules that have lain dead for a long time. They fail to consider three historical facts:
1. Language evolution is natural. For cultural, social, biological, and technological reasons, language changes. The world gets smaller, thanks to globalization and technology, so our loan words from other languages increase. Our ability, or inability, to properly pronounce words, such as the Philippine English gigil, now a standard English word, can change the way we spell it.
2. The difference between spoken and written language diminishes over time. Consider the grammatical marker that, as in I know that you know. Our elementary writing teachers would insist on using that in the sentence. But in speech, saying I know you know sounds fine. In time, dropping that in this sentence becomes the accepted writing standard.
3. Usage challenges have a long history. Upon researching etymology, you learn that every word is subject to changes that embellish, diminish, or eliminate them from the language.
If you ever get called out for using over instead of more than, don't be like me back in the 1990s. Fight back. Believe me: over has been acceptable for over a thousand years.
