Historic ’causes
While researching some historic uses of SAI in English, I came upon an interesting passage from A Sixth Booke to the Coutesse of Pembrokes Arcadia from 1624.
Shamefac’t Cherrie, blush no more, Nor esteeme your beauties store To be lessened, cause you see Her lips excell much worth may bee In your Vermillion, though no eye Can discerne a paritie.
And I thought: huh? Surely that couldn’t be an abbreviated version of because…or could it? And so I, as now (temporarily) anyone can do, looked up “cause” in the OED. I found this:
1. (with of) = BECAUSE of, on account of. 1513 BRADSHAW St. Werburge (1848) 184 Churches..were gyuen To god and saynt Werburge cause of deuocion.
A use without the “of” comes in 1556. Of course, the OED notes that this usage is “now only dial., or vulgar.” So pepper your formal documents with cause. Just be prepared to back it up with a little historical precedent.
(And no, there’s no SAI in the passage above. It continues, “You worthy were to set at odds, / As did the Apple, all the Godds:”)