Update: thank you everyone! user @Today has provided a great link of a discussion that suggests the correct answer is where being an abbreviation of, whereas as a replacement of since, hypothesized in these comments.
As I love archaic definitions, I’m more convinced to now that this is the answer!
Especially since the question originates from one weirdo using “where” instead of since.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/338694/is-it-ever-appropriate-to-use-where-instead-of-because-or-since
Like “Where we knew he was heading to Chicago tomorrow, we got on the first plane heading east to intercept.”
“Where we knew where the safe was, we began to cut through the wall in the corner behind her desk.”
Thanks
Nosince
Haha, love this.
I feel like I’ve never heard this before, ever.
Me too. And everyone else is on the same page .
Okay, maybe this is a neighborhood thing. Or immigrant parents, something more specific and less common than general region.
U.S. born and raised. I’ve traveled a moderate amount and have literally never heard this (most of time spent in Mid-Atlantic, Gulf Coast, and Southwest)
Okay, thanks
I can relate, OP. When I was a kid, I often heard people say “on an accident” instead of “on accident” or “by accident”. Didn’t realize how odd this was until my teen years.
Haha, thanks.
Every time I hear or read “…deer in the headlights”(apparently very common) instead of “…deer in headlights”, my brain short circuits.
Guilty as charged. There’s only one set of headlights in the observable universe, I reckon.
Damn, I should have said, “I wreck on”.
Haha, no worries, I must have heard and read " deer in the headlights" 10,000 times in my life before I finally noticed it one day and started eye twitching, haha.
Damn, and it took me long enough to accept “on accident” is probably fine now
I have never heard that. Lived in Missouri and Virginia.
K, thanks
It sounds like maybe something that comes out of legal jargon to my ears (disclaimer, I am no lawyer or anything of the sort, most of my understanding of lawyer talk comes from tv shows and movies which are not usually the most accurate)
I could kind of imagine some sort of statement beginning with something like “Where the defendant, having been…” followed by some descriptions of circumstances and legal precedents and such.
I like this, good call, I feel like one of those Southern gentlemen lawyers would say something like that.
Maybe> I’ve seen that in a TV show or something.
Do you mean like, “in the situation of?” For example, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Otherwise I’d say that since they’re both prepositions–dealing with the relationship between two or more things in space or time–it sounds like somebody was just a little confused about how to explain it.
Where people use them interchangeably you’re likely to find non-native English speakers.
Yes, it’s used consistently to express “in the situation of…” the same way “since” is normally used.
This is a native English speaker from Colorado, but after looking it up, I don’t see any indication that some Coloradans regularly use “where” instead of “since”.
I never heard that when I was in Denver.
Everything else is written in standard English.
Since where they say that?
I’ve never heard this in California… but “since” can imply any kind of causal or logical relationship, while both your examples seem specifically related to physical proximity. So is it possible the usage you’re noticing is constrained to that kind of context?
Thanks, it isn’t only locative.
It isn’t just constrained to location, it’s more about “in the situation of…”
These examples work also:
“‘Where most of the animals are scared, I can’t see the point of scaring them further.’”
“Where they can pick locks, they might already know what’s in the safe!”
