“Suffice it to say” or “suffice to say”?
The plot makes twists and turns like a snake writhing in the desert. To tell would be to spoil, but suffice to say, writer, director and cast have colluded brilliantly.
Fraser’s scenes are painfully boring to watch���suffice it to say,��he’s not a master of physical comedy.
Take Our Poll
An editor in an online editorial group recently raised the question of which version is correct, and her query elicited more than 80 comments. Many people swore that suffice to say was the correct and only version, and that suffice it to say was a ���hairy mutant���. People in the other camp lambasted their opponents, and resorted to dictionaries to prove beyond a doubt that the four-word version was gospel. What is the truth of the matter?
Quick takeaways
Both forms are in use (see more detail at Frequency below).
Suffice it to say was formerly considered standard, and is still seen by many people as the only correct formulation.
However, possibly because of its puzzling syntax, it is often “regularized” to suffice to say.
The traditional formula is still widely used, and useful, despite being considered pompous or old-fashioned by some.
There are strange variations on it, such as sufficed to say and the eggcornish surface it to say.
Below, I look in more detail at the grammar, frequency and history of this phrase, which the Oxford Dictionary Online aptly defines as “Used to indicate that one is saying enough to make one���s meaning clear while withholding something for reasons of discretion or brevity.”
Syntax
Three things are worth mentioning about suffice it to say. First, the subject of the sentence is the ���dummy��� or impersonal it. Second, the verb form is subjunctive���the absence of the normal third person singular -s shows this, i.e. suffice, rather than suffices. Third, there is subject-verb inversion.
The phrase thus belongs to that very small group of ���fossilized��� phrases in which the subjunctive is used: God save the Queen!��far be it from me to…, Perish the thought! All of them could be rewritten as ���Let + subject + verb��� i.e. let God save the Queen, let it suffice to say, etc.
However, the fact that such subjunctive phrases are rare and on the fringes of most people���s grammar means, I believe, that they have difficulty analyzing the ���suffice it to say��� form, and therefore attempt to regularize it to “suffice to say”. The inversion of subject and verb presents a further block to analysis.
���Suffice to say���, however, while sounding superficially like a second person imperative���stand up, wake up, pay attention, etc.���is as anomalous as the four-word form. Who is being addressed in this imperative?
Current situation
Frequency
The Oxford English Corpus��(OEC) has slightly more examples of the string ���suffice to say��� than of “suffice it to say”: 952: 937 (and each occurs less than once per million words of text.) However, filtering out ���suffice to say��� as a zero infinitive, e.g. in phrases such as let it suffice to say, it should suffice to say, etc., reduces its total to well below 900, and therefore less frequent than the longer form.
Though the shorter form is used in all varieties of English, its use does seem to be particularly marked in Australian English, at least in the OEC data.
In the Corpus of Contemporary American, the distribution is very different: 376 occurrences of the longer version against 97 for the shorter. It is noticeable that in academic writing the longer form occurs in a ratio of 6:1.
A Google Ngrams comparison of “suffice to say” and “suffice it to say” suggests a decline in the use of both phrases over the last century, However, “suffice to say” is often the zero infinitive mentioned previously, so it would be too time-consuming to compare the frequency of the two forms over time. For the period 1960-2000 (i.e., the latest period covered) “suffice it to say” is the more frequent of the two forms.
Dictionaries
Both the Oxford Online Dictionary and Macquarie bracket the it: suffice (it) to say, indicating clearly that they accept it as optional. Merriam-Webster Online notes “often used with an impersonal it Collins shows only the complete phrase.
History
The unrevised entry in the OED heads the relevant sense with the following rubric: ���Const[ruction] inf[initive] or clause with, or (formerly) without, anticipatory dummy subject it. Now chiefly in the subjunctive, suffice it , sometimes short for suffice it to say .”
The first OED citation of this impersonal use is from the Middle English (1390) Confessio Amantis:
to studie upon the worldes lore Sufficeth now withoute more.
There is one more citation before 
the Book of Common Prayer on Publyke Baptisme��f. iiii*v (1549)
If the childe be weake, it shall suffice to powre water vpon it.
However, the first citation for the exact phrase ���suffice it to say��� does not appear until a 1779 edition of the periodical The Mirror:
Suffice it to say, that my parting with the Dervise was very tender.
An earlier citation,(1692), however has:
It suffices to say, That Xantippus becoming the manager of affairs, altered extreamly the Carthaginian Army.
In the��Corpus of Historical American, the string “suffice to say” is mainly of the zero infinitive type mentioned above. However, the earliest citation of it independently is in 1815, in the drama by Edward Hitchcock the Emancipation of Europe, or The Downfall of Bonaparte: Marshal Ney, no less, replies to a question from Talleyrand, no less, about how a battle went:
Oh most murderous! Too horrid to relate. Suffice to say Our troops are overwhelmed in toto.
The next example is from Around the Tea-Table (1847), by T. De Witt Talmage (now, there’s a moniker for you!), author, as his title page proclaims, of “Crumbs Swept Up,” “Abominations of Modern Society,” “Old Wells Dug Out,” Etc.
Perhaps it was gout, although his active habits and a sparse diet throw doubt on the supposition. Suffice to say it was a thorn — that is, it stuck him. It was sharp.
Five O���Clock Tea by American painter Julius LeBlanc Stewart (1855 ��� 1919)
“Suffice to Say”—a long-forgotten hit
Googling in connection with this topic, I discovered a 1977 hit by a band called The Yachts. Here are some of the lyrics:
Although the rhyming’s not that hot | It’s quite a snappy little tune | I’m sure you’ll like the chorus too | It’s short and sweet and to the point | It even says that I love you | Just after this: Suffice to say you love me | Can’t say that I blame you | Suffice to say I love you too
Clearly, leaving out it was necessary on rhythmical grounds. And if you want to relive your Punk days with this little ditty, here it is:
Filed under: Advice for writers, Confusable words, Meaning of words, Word origins Tagged: Subjunctive
