Recently, I was having a conversation when I uttered the phrase, “all the sudden…”. I paused to correct myself and say, “all of the sudden…” when I realized that this particular phrase doesn’t really make sense to me. (The correct phrasing, I gather, is “all of a sudden,” with which some people take major issue.) Why all of a sudden? Can you have some of a sudden? What about none of a sudden? What exactly is a sudden? Is it fluffy?

If you look up “sudden” in dictionary.com, you get the following definition.

sud�den adj.
1. Happening without warning; unforeseen: a sudden storm.
2. Characterized by hastiness; abrupt or rash: a sudden decision. See Synonyms at impetuous.
3. Characterized by rapidity; quick and swift.

However, as the word is preceded by “a” in the phrase, I would think that would mean that this is in fact a noun. I wouldn’t say “a dirty” at the end of a phrase. For example, saying “All of a dirty, I found my pocket lint!” just doesn’t sound right. Another look at dictionary.com shows that “sudden” can in fact be a noun.

sudden \Sud”den\, n.
An unexpected occurrence; a surprise.

Hence, when I use the phrase, “all of a sudden”, I probably mean “all of a surprise.” This doesn’t make a whole lot more sense. For example, here’s a sentence using the real phrase properly.

“All of a sudden, a cat fell on my head.”

Some of you may be hung up on the fact that a cat fell on my head. From where did this cat fall? Don’t worry about it. Perhaps someone is hanging from the ceiling with a bag full of cats, and happened to drop one on my head for some unknown reason. Perhaps I have a window ledge over my head on which cats like to sit, and a cat got startled, thus landing squarely on my noggin. Either way, the facts of the matter is irrelevant. Look at the following transformation.

“All of a surprise, a cat fell on my head.”

I would in fact be surprised, but that doesn’t make the above sentence make any more sense. Does that mean that the sum total of the surprise is that I have some creature on my head that is now digging its claws into my skull? Perhaps, but that is not the original intent of the sentence. Dictionary.com provides the following definition for the phrase.

Idiom:
all of a sudden
Very quickly and unexpectedly; suddenly.

A literal translation just doesn’t make sense. I have to rest assured that “all of a sudden” is just the way it is.

The following were the different formations of the phrase I have heard / seen / used:

- all of a sudden
- all of the sudden
- all the sudden

I was curious, so I did a google search on each of these phrases (linked above). Why? I did this because common language is the correct form of a language. If almost all of us spelled center as “centre”, then the former would no longer be the properly accepted spelling. (I speak, of course, of English in the United States, because we like to butcher language for our own purposes, apparently.)

What’s interesting are the counts I get back.

- all of a sudden: 741,000 results
- all of the sudden: 83,600 results
- all the sudden: 35,100 results

Hence, in common usage, the proper form is in fact still dominant. Drat! This means that I have been using it wrong for a while!

All this aside, I also realized that I could easily replace the phrase “all of a sudden” with the word “suddenly”. Eureka! This both shortens the phrase as well as makes the sentence less awkward. I have no problems with this formulation of the sentence: “Suddenly, a cat jumped on my head.”

At last, I am at peace with this phrase. Perhaps now I can worry about extricating myself from the tangle of animal on my cranium.