"Shortly ago"

Question

Somewhere along the line I picked up using the phrase "shortly ago" as in:
John arrived shortly ago.
Most of my linguist co-workers think it sounds awful, and accused me of using South-Jersey-isms. My South Jersey friends disavow any claim to this usage. My British friends insist they're not to blame.

It's common enough usage (though obviously non-standard) that can be found in many cases by a search of the web or Usenet, but I can't figure out where it comes from.
As best I can figure, it's a multi-word adverb basically synonymous with 'recently'. Has anyone else heard this usage, and if so where? -Bill

Usenet · Accepted Answer

You're a trend setter Bill.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Somewhere along the line I picked up using the phrase "shortly ago" as in: John arrived shortly ago. Most of ... using South-Jersey-isms. My South Jersey friends disavow any claim to this usage. My British friends insist they're not to blame.[/nq]
I'm a Brit and I have never come across this phrase.

(It sounds as though it could be used as the name of a character in a James Bond or Austin Powers movie - "Shortly Ago".)
[nq:1]It's common enough usage (though obviously non-standard) that can be found in many cases by a search of the web or Usenet, but I can't figure out where it comes from.[/nq]
A web search using google.co.uk gives 66 hits. This does not suggest that it is a specifically British phrase.
[nq:1]As best I can figure, it's a multi-word adverb basically synonymous with 'recently'. Has anyone else heard this usage, and if so where? -Bill[/nq]
Peter Duncanson
UK (posting from a.e.u)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Somewhere along the line I picked up using the phrase "shortly ago"as in: John arrived shortly ago. Most of my ... can figure, it's a multi-word adverb basically synonymous with 'recently'. Has anyone else heard this usage, and if sowhere? -Bill[/nq]
A new one on this Anglicised Australian. It actually sounds to me like a foreign speaker's mistake, but you clearly aren't a foreign speaker, so I wonder if it may be a feature of one of the rising versions such as West-Indian English that you've picked up somehow.

Gg tells me it's in Wilson's Tales of the Borders , in a colloquial Scottish passage; but there's no example in OED1. OED1 does have a "shortly syne", but in that example, "syne" has its sense of "after", not "ago". (I did notice that of the first five Googles, four had foreign or first-generation authorship, and of the next five at least three had amateur authors.)
Mike.

"Shortly ago"

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