Because reasons

syntactician:

because can be followed by a finite clause:

I left him because [he sold my prize-winning armadillo].

It can be followed by a prepositional phrase:

I left him because [of his unbearable stench]. 

But a non-standard usage is gaining wider and wider acceptance, namelybecause+noun (often a proper noun):

I can’t come out tonight because Skyrim.


This isn’t a straight nonstandard equivalent to the other uses - it’s different. It means something like ‘I’m so busy being totally absorbed by X that I don’t need to explain further, and you should know about this because it’s a completely valid incredibly important thing to be doing’. This page is all posts that were tagged with #because Skyrim.

But has a similar use (taken from the same Tumblr page):

Okay I’d totally love to read my dash and everything but Skyrim.

I like it.

I think there may be some restrictions on which nouns are possible in this construction. For example, while I think it’s fine to say:

I can’t come out tonight because homework/math.

I can’t come out tonight because essays/readings.

I can’t come out tonight because busyness. 

I don’t think it works to say:

*I can’t come out tonight because too much/lots of/difficult homework. 

*I can’t come out tonight because essay/my essay/an essay/this essay.

*I can’t come out tonight because busy. 

So it seems like the because+noun construction really must consist of a bare noun, not a noun with a determiner or an adjective. However, I think I might be able to be okay with: 

?I can never get to bed at a reasonable hour because interesting people on the internet!

Also, I think the title “because reasons” may be an even more specialized version of this use, actually. Because you can paraphrase “I can’t come out tonight because Skyrim/homework” as “I can’t come out tonight because OF Skyrim/homework”, but I don’t think “I don’t like him because reasons” paraphrases well as “I don’t like him because OF reasons”. 

Update: Where “because noun” probably came from. 

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