Can't we say "all the day"?
I'm a studying English using a book titled "Grammar in use".
I've learned that "all day" means "the complete day from beginning to end".
The book says, "Note that we say "all day" (not "all the day")".
I know that we can say "all the ____", e.g. "all the time", "all the flowers", etc.
However, I want to know why the book states that we can't say "all the day".
So — why can't we?
Solution 1:
As WS2 observes, "all the day" does occur in certain circumstances where native English speakers hear it without batting an eye—chiefly (as GEdgar suggests) in traditional folk songs. One is "I've Been Working on the Railroad" (and "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You," sung to the same tune):
I've been working on the railroad [or "The eyes of Texas are upon you"], all the livelong day
Another is "Polly Wolly Doodle":
Oh, I went down South for to see my Sal
Sing Polly wolly doodle all the day
My Sal, she is a spunky gal
Sing Polly wolly doodle all the day
To like effect is the Australian verse "Hoeing and Stumping" by John Lane:
Hoeing weeds on Cosme land
Chip, chip, chipping all the day,
Bending back and blist'ring hand
Chip, chip, chipping all the day
And from "Been Listenin' All the Day Long," identified in Mid-America Folklore (1992) as a White spiritual:
Been list'ning all the day long.
Ben list'ning all the day.
Been list'ning all the day long.
To hear some sinner pray.
The phrase "all the day" seems to have been common in earlier centuries. For example, David Quinn, Alison Quinn & Susan Hillier, Newfoundland from Fishery to Colony: Northwest Passage Searches (1979) quotes this journal entry from 1612:
1th December 1612 in the morning the wind at south east untill noone in the after noone at east but all the day very much snowe until night at night the wind at east with showers of snowe and some froost
Two of the most frequently played LPs of my youth were Donald Swann & Michael Flanders's At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat. The latter included "A Song of Patriotic Prejudice," which compares the English (to their great and perhaps undeserved credit) with their closest neighbors within the UK—and with the world of foreigners generally. It includes these critical lines (at 1:27–1:32 of the YouTube clip) about the Scotsman:
He eats salty porridge, he works all the day,
And he hasn't got bishops to show him the way.
In contemporary idiomatic English, however, "all the day" is something of an oddball phrasing—certainly far less common in everyday speech than "all day"—for reasons that may have more to do with random drift than with any systematic change in informal English usage. In any event, you can use "all the day" without fear of being misunderstood by others, but the usage is likely to mark you as a non-native speaker or, perhaps, a folksinger.