. . . any more

Whatever happened to . . . the simple two-word expression "any more"?

It was alive and kicking when The Stranglers released No More Heroes in 1977.

Two distinct and separate words – “any” and “more”, according to every version of the lyrics I could find online.

But our beautiful language has been so badly dumbed down that nowadays my spellchecker actually corrects “any more” to “anymore” as though, all of a sudden, it should be one word.

As though the perfectly correct “any more” has somehow become so wrong that it needs rectifying.

The Oxford Dictionary, for goodness’ sake, joins in with this fanciful nonsense.

It defines this bastardised wrong thing as ad adverb meaning “any further extent; any longer” and cites as an example “she refused to listen anymore”.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But I feel a bit like King Canute, single-handedly standing up against a tide of linguistic badness.

There has, seemingly, been much debate on this “any more” vs “any more” thing.

Anymore is, unsurprisingly, an American import, and those who support its use claim the single word means any longer.  By contrast “any more” means even the smallest amount.

To illustrate: “I don’t buy shoes anymore because I don’t need any more shoes.”

But I don’t buy it. I see “anymore” everywhere and “any more” nowhere, because nobody observes this supposed distinction.

They simply can’t be bothered pressing the space bar between the two words.

If there are any old-schoolers out there who are with me on this please let me know. I don’t want to be alone on this any more.