Linguistic intuitions

A few days ago I was curious about the origin of the final "s" in "whereabouts"; it turns out to originate in a genitive form, used adverbially, of the adjective "whereabout". The full story, or as full a story as one will get from the OED, is told in that dictionary's entries for "-ward" and "-wards". It's interesting! One thing that interested me was that the adverbs in -ward are claimed to generally have been preceded (at least in Old English) by preëxisting orthographically identical adjectives, as in, I suppose, "a backward glance". One is naturally led to wonder, then, what are the adjectival uses of "toward" are, especially presuming one can't really think of any.  Not all of these uses are explicitly marked as obsolete, but the only one that I think I wouldn't be puzzled to encounter is marked "rare": definition 4b, "Of things: Favourable, propitious: the opposite of untoward." Though this is puzzling, since I think of "untoward" not as meaning unfavorable or ill-tiding, but as more like, though not all that much like, the opposite of the explicitly marked as obsolete 4a, "Disposed to do what is asked or required; willing, compliant, obliging, docile", which the OED claims is the opposite of "froward", which, were I to use it, I would use in the sense of forward def'n 8: presumptuous, pert, bold, immodest (I take great pleasure, incidentally, in the phrase "partitive concord" as deployed in def'n 1 there)—that is, I take "untoward" pretty much solely in the sense of def'n 5a, and the only adjectival use of "toward" that I can see myself using is as the opposite of that: compliant insofar as apt to behave becomingly.

But even there I think I would be puzzled by any use that wasn't both negated and predicative, which is not the case with the hardier "untoward". That is:

Your cousin's proposition to the bride was rather untoward, don't you think?

I hope you're happy; once again, your cousin's untoward behavior has ruined another get-together.

That comment of your cousin's was not exactly toward, was it?

But:

*I was much gratified finally to see some toward behavior from your cousin.

*I thought your cousin's conduct was admirably toward, for once.

I'm on the fence about absolute uses:

His behavior, toward though it may have been compared to the standard he usually sets, still left something to be desired.

And I'm not sure I can think of a negative attributive "toward" that doesn't seem awkward on general stylistic grounds.

Anyway, those OED entries on -ward and -wards are worth reading.

Comments

[abc]

i thought towards, whereabouts are just simply plurals

[abc]

used for emphasis, whereabout could be just one location, with added s it would suggest many locations, toward is just one try while towards could mean multiple tries toward that direction