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As mentioned in this question, I know that "many a year" is literary and equivalent to "many years".

But I stumbled upon this phrase:

'For many's a year now,' he said, 'we've been running a source inside the police. [...]'

I suppose it has the the same meaning as above. But why is structured like this? What does that 's mean here?

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Mahm00d
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  • It's "many a year", not "many's a year". You can also use the phrase "many's the year", but it's more formal and literary. The more usual phrase is "many years (For many years now, we've been........). – Khan Jan 07 '17 at 08:53

1 Answers1

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This is an example of English vernacular. It sounds like a "rural" dialect of some kind, although without more dialogue I can't specify from where, exactly. As you guess, it means the same as "for many years now".

Similar example:

"Many's the time I done tried to get him to open up and talk about it, but he never did."

Because it's a dialect, I wouldn't recommend using it unless you were trying to imitate someone who talked that way naturally.

Andrew
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  • Is "I done tried" correct in your answer? I think it shoud be have instead of done. – Khan Jan 07 '17 at 08:44
  • I understand. But I'm still curious about apostrophe s. Is it the abbreviation of "is" as "Many is the time" or is it something else? – Mahm00d Jan 07 '17 at 10:53
  • @Khan again, vernacular. It's a common structure in certain parts of the United States. There's a famous comedian of yesteryear named Andy Griffith, here is a recording of him explaining the play "Hamlet" which (if you can understand it) you might find funny as the humor is all about this country man explaining an English classic. – Andrew Jan 07 '17 at 15:01
  • For example, he says "I went to see a play right here lately, it was one of them classical plays. And it was wrote by a fella named 'William Shakespeare' that lived over here in the old country here a while back. And it's a play, it's called 'Hamlet' and it was named after this young boy Hamlet that appeared in the play. And it was pretty good, except that they don't speak as good a English as we do." – Andrew Jan 07 '17 at 15:04
  • @Mahm00d I suppose it might be a contraction of "many is the time" but I don't really know for sure. – Andrew Jan 07 '17 at 15:05
  • @Khan found this quote from the 1993 movie "The Beverly Hillbillies", a typical "fish out of water" story of a backwoods family who moves to upscale Beverly Hills: Jed Clampett: "I reckon you done what you done because you didn't know we was who we was. And if we hadn't been who we was, we'd have still been much obliged for you to have done what you done." – Andrew Jan 07 '17 at 16:20
  • The phrase is humorous because it's very country vernacular, expressed in an unusual way, but still makes perfect sense once you understand it. – Andrew Jan 07 '17 at 16:21