I think it's high time "alot" was granted wordship. To me, in one usage, it means "often". "I go there alot" = "I go there often." People use it in that fashion frequently, and using the other form "a lot" doesn't make as much sense if you think about it hard enough. "Alot" can also mean "much."
The word you want to create has two meanings, and they're the primary meanings of the original two-word phrase. From the American Heritage Dictionary:
- Lot:
- Definition 1, informal [i.e., the primary use of this word is in informal language, not the more formal uses such as "a dye lot" or "a piece of land."]
[*]1a. A large extent, amount, or number. Often used in the plural: is in a lot of trouble; has lots of friends.[*]1b. Used adverbially with "a" or in the plural to mean "to a great degree or extent" or "frequently": felt a lot better; ran lots faster; doesn't go out a whole lot; has seen her lots lately.
When you think about how people pronounce it, the article and the word might as well be contracted together.
This has happened many times in the English language. In the past it was usually because the two words together had taken on a new meaning that the original phrase did not have, such as "always" from "all ways" and "without" from "with out."
In recent times it's more likely that a portmanteau word was created within a trade or profession, and cultural or technological evolution later brought the subject, and therefore the word, into common parlance, such as the accountant's "spreadsheet" tool or the "footrest" on a vehicle or other machine.
We have seen one case (and I think the only case but let's look for more) of an article being joined to a word: "another." Curiously, this has been incorrectly parsed and back-formed into "a nother," so people say things like "I'd like a better nother one." But this is rare. The word was formed 800 years ago and I can't think of a single other (or "nother"
) formation like it. (In compounds like "aground" and "along" the "a" is an elision of "on.")
I don't think you're going to get much support for your suggestion. "A lot" does not have a new meaning, and forming a compound word with an article runs counter to our sense of word building.
What's the harm? There is no good reason alot shouldn't be treated as a valid word.
The problem comes from the fact that English is a democratic language rather than an authoritarian one. There is no academy, government office or patriarch to tell us how to speak or write, whose authority we would obediently defer to. Our dictionaries, journalists and other writers and public speakers reflect the language of the people.
If enough people use a new word like "humongous" it shows up in the dictionary and TV news. But to change a spelling is harder because you have billions of pages already printed the old way. Perhaps as the electronic age makes printing less common you will be able to convince people to use your spelling, but you'd have to convince a lot of them before all the web designers would start doing it your way. Besides, it's hard enough to teach children how to spell, why confuse them with two ways to write the same thing?
And of course you have the problem that there are three Anglophone communities: India, the largest, the USA, the most influential, and the UK and most of the former Commonwealth, the most respected in matters of language. Getting them to agree is almost impossible.
I'm going to be defiant...
Tell it to the Queen.
