Forum: english.stackexchange.com
Tags: <history><archaicisms>
Title: Is "from whence" correct? Or should it be "whence"?
Question: I just saw a  parody on the Lord of the Rings , where one of the characters says:   it must be cast back in the fire from whence it came!   This struck me as odd, since I expected them to say "whence it came"; but now I find that "from whence" seems to occur as well.  Does anybody know whether this is correct, or whether it has been correct at some point and subsequently fell into disgrace (or vice versa)?

Answers:
sents: text: I did some research using the Corpus of Historical American English , and it paints the following picture: (X axis: year, Y axis: incidences per million words)
text: This shows that from whence has been in constant use all the way back to 1810 (that's how far the Corpus goes).
text: Indeed, as the World Wide Words post already linked by Shaun says: And even a brief look at historical sources shows that from whence has been common since the thirteenth century .
text: It has been used by Shakespeare, Defoe (in the opening of Robinson Crusoe : “He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York; from whence he had married my mother”), Smollett, Dickens (in A Christmas Carol : “He began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine”), Dryden, Gibbon, Twain (in Innocents Abroad : “He traveled all around, till at last he came to the place from whence he started”), and Trollope, and it appears 27 times in the King James Bible (including Psalm 121:
text: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help”).
text: Emphasis added.
text: (The King James Bible was completed in 1611).
text: As you can see from the above graph, from whence is on a steady decline; however, so is whence all on its own, so the graph isn't really that helpful.
text: What we really want is the ratio :
text: The values on the Y axis in this graph tell you how many times more often whence was used without from rather than with.
text: So, around 1920, whence all by itself was roughly 10 times more popular than from whence ; nowadays, on average, every second usage of whence is prefixed by a from , according to the Corpus.
text: In other words, from whence has been actually gaining "relative" popularity since 1920.
answer_details: author: english.stackexchange.com/users/300/RegDwigнt
score: 32
sents: text: It looks as if there has always been some doubt about whence versus from whence .
text: The first edition of Wycliff's Psalms (1382) has: I rered vp myn eȝen in to the mounteynes;
text: whennys shal come helpe to me.
text: But the edition of 1388 has:
text: I reiside myn iyen to the hillis; fro whannus help schal come to me.
text: I can imagine 14th century grammarians having the same argument we're having now: "
text: Nay!
text: Thou canst nat say, fro whannus : yt lakketh gramer!"
answer_details: author: english.stackexchange.com/users/2175/Gareth Rees
score: 16
sents: text: It is technically redundant to say from whence , since whence means from where .
text: However, most modern usage of the word is prefixed with from .
text: It is a topic of heated debate in some circles.
answer_details: author: english.stackexchange.com/users/3918/Shaun
score: 4
sents: text: Both 'whence' and 'from whence' are commonly used.
text: The addition of 'from' is a more recent addition ('whence' is first recorded circa 1300, 'whence from' 1568)
text: but seems to be just as common.
text: It might seem somewhat tautological given that most dictionaries list 'whence' as meaning 'from which place', but it is one of those phrases that has been used for so long it has become standard.
answer_details: author: english.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 4
sents: text: The NOAD reports the following note about the use of from whence and whence : USAGE Strictly speaking, whence means from what place , as in whence did you come?
text: Thus, the preposition from in from whence did you come?
text: is redundant and its use is considered incorrect by some.
text: The use with from is very common, though, and has been used by reputable writers since the 14th century.
text: It is now broadly accepted in standard English.
answer_details: author: english.stackexchange.com/users/252/kiamlaluno
score: 3

Summary of the answers:
It appears that whilst, "whence" and "from whence" are both commonly used, the phrase "from whence" has been gaining popularity since 1920. Technically, it is redundant to say "from whence" since "whence" means "from where", but it has been used for so long that it has become standard.
There has always been doubt whether to use "whence" or "from whence" , however "from whence" has become more popular today.  Purists argue that "from whence" is technically wrong as "whence" already means "from where".It might seem somewhat tautological given that most dictionaries list 'whence' as meaning 'from which place', but it is one of those phrases that has been used for so long it has become standard, so using "from whence" would be somewhat tautological, but it has been standardised.
It appears that whilst, "whence" and "from whence" are both commonly used, the phrase "from whence" has been gaining popularity since 1920. Technically, it is redundant to say "from whence" since "whence" means "from where", but it has been used for so long that it has become standard.
Technically, 'from whence' is redundant, since 'whence' already means 'from where'. However, both have been commonly used since the 13th or 14th century.
Both 'whence' and 'from whence' are commonly used. According to Corpus, nowadays, on average, every second usage of  whence is prefixed by a from, however around 1920 whence was more popular. Whence  means  from where, so it is technically redundant to say  from whence.  
It appears that 'whence' and 'from whence', whilst not exactly equivalent, have been used as such for such a long time that it is hard to say when 'from whence' became so common.