When? ……… Then.

It’s Wednesday morning, and I’ve just come back from an early swim. I like the swimming pool I go to for three main reasons:

1. It’s within easy walking distance of my home.

2. It’s not usually busy when I go.

3. The staff are always very friendly.

When I was leaving the building, I said goodbye to the lady at reception, and she said it back to me. But as I was walking home, I was thinking to myself what else we could have said instead of simply saying the word goodbye. And this is what I thought:

Me: See you Friday.

Her: OK then.

Or we could also have said this:

Me: See you Friday.

Her: OK then.

Me: Right, see you then, then.

And just in case you’re wondering, that wasn’t a mistake. There are two thens in the last sentence.

Then is a very simple and very common word, but it can have two different meanings.

One meaning refers to a time, for example a particular day (Friday), or a part of a day (tomorrow morning or this evening), and the other meaning is a word we use to end a conversation and to show that you agree, for example, a teacher might say at the end of the class “That’s it for today then”.

So in “Right, see you then, then“, the first then refers to Friday, and the second then shows that it’s a date.