It's Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl.

You asked for it and I've been working on it for over a year.

My first print book comes out this week, July 8th.

You can buy a copy now wherever fine books are sold.

Grammar Girl here.

Today's topic is subversive Christmas carols.

There's a listener named Kat, whose holiday joy is crushed.

Every time she hears the Christmas Carol, joy to the world.

She asks, why do we sing joy to the world?

The Lord is come.

Rather than joy to the world, the Lord has come.

Not wanting Kat to face the holidays with grammar consternation,

I went on a quest to figure out what's going on with these lyrics.

It actually turned out to be a pretty tough question,

but I eventually discovered that the phrase the Lord is come

uses an archaic form of English that was very common back in 1719

when joy to the world was written by Isaac Watts.

A number of references say that this construction uses the word come

as an unaccusative, intransitive verb.

And don't worry, you don't need to remember that

because it's a form that's now nearly extinct in the English language.

If you're watching for it, you'll find similar constructions

...