[1] While any more (also spelled anymore) is typically a negative/interrogative polarity item used in negative, interrogative, or hypothetical contexts, speakers of some dialects of English use it in positive or affirmative contexts,[notes 1] with a meaning similar to nowadays or from now on.
[1][2] The difference between negative (NPI, short for "negative polarity item") anymore and positive anymore can be characterized as follows: Positive anymore occurs in some varieties of North American English, especially in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley, Baltimore and its suburbs, as well as the Midland variety widely spoken in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri; its usage extends to Nevada, Utah and some other western U.S.
[4] Regarding prescriptive recommendations on usage, Garner's Modern English Usage echoes the typical prescription that it not be used in writing intended to meet approval with prescriptive readers, scoring it as "misused" and Stage 1 (rejected) on Garner's Language-Change Index (similar to the Heller & Macris index):[5] "In a linguistic study of Missourians,[6] informants considered this dialectal usage 'well established, though controversial.'
Some linguists theorize that the North American usage derives from Irish or Scots-Irish sources.
[9][10] The following examples illustrate the use of positive anymore in Irish or North American English speech, as recorded by lexicographers or sociolinguists.