this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
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English usage and grammar

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"Try and..." compared to "Try to..." (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world to c/english@lemmy.ca
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The phrase "try and do [something]" has become ubiquitous, but it doesn't make any sense. If you say "I'm going to try and eat this whole pie", you're saying you're going to try to eat the whole pie, and you're going to eat the whole pie. You're making two statements, joined by "and." You can skip the "Try and..." part.

It should nearly always be "try to...", instead of "try and..."

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[–] pglpm@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

There is an interesting (as usual) two-page discussion on try and in Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. A snapshot is enclosed; apologies for visually impaired people (I'll try to attach a text later). Some of the takeaways:

The use of and between two verbs where to might be expected (to would seem unlikely in some of the constructions) is an old one in English. The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] has examples back to the 16th century; the Middle English Dictionary has examples as far back as the 13th. The verbs most often used in this construction in past centuries were begin, go, take, and come — the last three of which are still so used. Try did not appear as try and until the17th century, when our familiar sense of the word was first established. Interestingly, the earliest example for the "make an attempt" sense in the OED involves the try and construction, so try and may actually be older than try to.

[...]

But try and has actually been common in print for about a century and a half, as the following garland of examples amply shows. You will observe that most of the examples are not from highly formal styles; many are from speech and fictional speech and from familiar letters: [...] These examples show that try and has been socially acceptable for these two centuries but that it is not used in an elevated style.

[...]

The judgment of try and in Fowler 1926 remains eminently sensible today: "It is an idiom that should be not discountenanced, but used when it comes natural."