Talk:Westward Ho!

Grammar of literal sense

"Westward ho" in the sense of "I propose to travel west" (the original meaning) -- I'm not sure what part of speech that is. I have it down as a verb... it's really a kind of anapodoton perhaps? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anapodoton)? It's a sentence fragment that stands for a complete sentence... not sure how that's handled here. Sorry. Herostratus (talk) 09:54, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

@Herostratus: You can express the same thing by just shouting "westward!"; you don't need the ho (as many pimps have told me). So it's the adjective or adverb. Since it's probably a command ("let's go westward") then I'd read it as ellipsis and call it an adverb. (Perhaps a clearer example is the Viking warrior shouting "onward!" — though probably not in English.) Equinox ◑ 14:13, 22 October 2020 (UTC)