While discussing the plight of African animals, the commenter said, "We have to decide if we want to save these ones, or those ones."

This terminology always struck me ass odd since "ones" doesn't seem like a good plural, or even a necessary add-on to "these" and "those" Don't "this" and "that" imply oneness while "those" and "these" designate more than one?

A "fused head". Who woulda thought.

Very interesting, goofy. Proof (and your links) is right that it seems odd to me. I would have guessed it's a regionalism.

And speaking of UK differences, I received this email today from someone in the UK:

quote:

Hi Nancy,

Please can i ask to reschedule our telephone interview to next week? I'm absolutely full of cold and feeling pretty dreadful. Any time next week is okay with me.

Sorry to mess you around.

In this short email, a few things stand out. "Full of cold?" "Sorry to mess you around?" While "dreadful" is surely common enough, it sounded more like British English to me, in that context, than American English.

The earliest citation of “these ones” in the OED Online is from the American novelist James Thomas Farrell in 1934.

Personally I see nothing weird about it. I probably use it all the time. If “these ones” is unnecessarily redundant, the surely “this one” is just as unnecessarily redundant.

I believe the word Proof used was "odd," and, while perhaps it was used in the 1934 in the U.S., it is not part of our vernacular now - or at least the vernacular I am familiar with. So, I get why Proof might call it an odd use, but clearly it is more commonly used in some English speaking places.

I found occurences of “these ones” and “those ones” in The Corpus of Contemporary American English. I can’t link directly to the results.

Perhaps it is used and I just haven't ever heard it. It's not like I hear everything said!