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I have been a fan of pos-beatles individual members songs

And in Paul Maccartney No More Loney Night's lyris I found this:

1 -"I can wait another day until I call you You've only got my heart on a string and everything a-flutter But another lonely night might take forever....."

what is the roe of "a-" in "a-flutter"???

And in George Harrison Blow Away's lyrics I found this:

2 - "Wind blew in, cloud was dispersed Rainbows appearing, the pressures were burst Breezes a-singing, now feeling good The moment had passed like I knew that it should"

what is the role of "a-" in "a-singing"????

Eullera Valiente
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    Have you looked up the word in a dictionary? What did that tell you? After looking it up, what specific questions do you still have about the meaning? – randomhead Dec 27 '21 at 14:29
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    To be fair, that is quite a hard thing to look up in a dictionary. If you search for "a-" in a typical learners dictionary you get the article "a", and perhaps the productive prefix "a-" meaning "not". You don't get the rare and unproductive sense of "in the state of" – James K Dec 27 '21 at 15:22
  • ...in the case of Dylan's The Times They are a-Changin' (where the archaic / obsolete prefix is only there to give a quaint / dialectal / "folksy" edge to the lyrics), you'd have a perfectly natural utterance if you simply discarded the prefix (The Times They are Changin'). But for the example cited here, the modern "non-poetic" version requires changing the verb form to "continuous": ...my heart on a string and everything fluttering. – FumbleFingers Dec 27 '21 at 16:11
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    Maybe so, @James, but OP didn't even tell us if they had done that much... – randomhead Dec 27 '21 at 18:33
  • Aflutter is a "real" word that you can look up; a-singing is not. Check out the answer that @FumbleFingers linked, which in my opinion is overly complicated, but the point is that "a-" can be added before any gerund, particularly in song (a-changin', a-walkin', a-talkin') for a rhythmic or folksy effect. That's the way modern English speakers who listen to music would understand it, at least. – cruthers Dec 28 '21 at 01:25
  • Also, listening to the song, it sounds to me like GH is saying "are singing." I'm aware that the internet sites that post and repost each other's lyrics basically all have "a-singing." – cruthers Dec 28 '21 at 01:27
  • @cruthers: It's essentially an "antiquated" prefix which is gradually dying out rather than gaining traction, but it just so happens that non-hyphenated *all aflutter* has gained ground in the past half-century or so, displacing what was effectively the *only* standard orthography originally (with a hyphen). I grant you it's a "word" in most dictionaries - but it rarely occurs in conversational non-facetious non-"poetic" contexts. – FumbleFingers Dec 28 '21 at 11:58

1 Answers1

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This prefix is now rare and mostly found in a few fixed words like "ablaze" or aflutter, or in poetry, such as George Harrison's lyric.

It comes from Old English "an" meaning "on", and has the sense of "in the state of". It forms adjectives that are usually non-attributive (they aren't placed before a noun)

So, Pauls's heart was aflutter (he had a quickly beating heart)

And George's breezes were in a state of song. (That is a bit of poetic personification)

You can't really use this to make new words. The prefix is unproductive so you can't say *"My husband is a-work" to mean that he is in a state of work.

James K
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  • "My husband is a-work" - I have a friend who is a teacher in a working-class district of Bristol, and she used to try to stop her pupils saying 'Please miss, can I go a-toilet?'. Now she says it's their dialect which deserves respect. It's taken her 20 years to reach this view. A and a- prefixing is common in a number of US and UK regional dialects, as well as being archaic in standard English, with verbs (e.g. he went a-hunting). – Michael Harvey Dec 27 '21 at 16:00
  • @Michael Woke Harvey, the "a-" in "go a-toilet" doesn't have the sense of "in state of" right? is it a vice of the Language in this case? – Eullera Valiente Dec 27 '21 at 18:19
  • I respect that, but it is a local dialect use and not something to teach as a model for learners. The a-toilet is related sense which means "to (or towards) the toilet" But it is nonstandard Here, only a couple of hundred miles away, I've never heard of such use. Not a vice but not something for a learner to copy. – James K Dec 27 '21 at 20:57
  • This answer is confusing, has typos, and doesn't observe the important distinction between "aflutter" as a word to be found in the dictionary and the stylistic technique of adding an "a-" to a gerund. – cruthers Dec 28 '21 at 01:31
  • I've never really understood why people comment about typos. That is what [edit]ing is for. – James K Dec 28 '21 at 07:54
  • @James K, what do you mean by "related sense" do you mean in this case the "a-" in go a-toilet can only make sense if "a-" means to or towards right? – Eullera Valiente Dec 28 '21 at 11:10
  • The sense of "aflutter" and "a-singing" are related to the sense of "a-toilet". All three derive ultimately from the middle English preposition "an/on". This forms words meaning "in a state of" (ablaze) "in the process of" (a-singing) and "towards" (a toilet). These are unrelated to "a-" meaning "not" – James K Dec 28 '21 at 11:14
  • @JamesK - normally I would just edit, but I've seen that you answer several questions a day and they are routinely full of typos because you evidently don't care about that. – cruthers Dec 28 '21 at 17:24
  • @James K Hi! I upvoted your good answer! Your good answer does not deserve a downvote! – Marios Athanasiou Oct 23 '23 at 06:03