Do thereafter, ever after, and ever since mean the same as after that time? Are they always interchangeable?
For example,
live happily thereafter/ever after/ever since
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Sign up to join this communityDo thereafter, ever after, and ever since mean the same as after that time? Are they always interchangeable?
For example,
live happily thereafter/ever after/ever since
Ever after and thereafter can modify a verb in the past tense, so we might say ‘They lived happily ever after’ or ‘They lived happily thereafter.’ Ever since is a little different, because one of the meanings of since is ‘until now from a particular time in the past’. That temporal specificity means that it must be used with the present perfect construction, so we’d say ‘They have lived happily ever since’ and not ‘They lived happily ever since’.
They mean roughly the same thing as one another, but:
That's my impression, anyway. See also Barrie England's good answer regarding choice of tense/aspect.