Why “Alongside”?

Ben Yagoda has a post about the recent rise in frequency of the word alongside: The American-born University of Sussex linguist Lynne Murphy recently remarked on her blog (Separated by A Common Language): “A few months ago, an American friend of my spouse asked him to ask me: ‘Why is everyone suddenly saying alongside?’” That put the word on my radar, and within days I was asking the same question as Lynne’s friend. It seemed like I couldn’t avoid “alongside”! And a little research demonstrated that the two of us weren’t imagining things. […] I hasten to say that “alongside” is an old word. Here’s the first definition in the Oxford English Dictionary: “Nautical. Close to the side of another vessel; side by side with another vessel. Later also: secured to a quay, wharf, etc.” This first citation is from 1704 and in 1798, there’s this from Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: “The naked Hulk alongside came.” By that time the word had started being used in the non-nautical…