xkcd again, but now on linguists and their weird habits
xkcd again, but now on linguists and their weird habits
I feel slightly offended. Because it's true.
(Alt text: "Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you're currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.")
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I feel like I'd use "Fell in a hole" if I took up most of the space of the hole, and could probably get out on my own, while I'd use "Fell down a hole" if I took up very little of the space of the hole, and couldn't get out on my own.
If I were to rely on my "guts":
- I fell in a hole - I was already inside the hole, and I fell.
- I fell down a hole - I fell completely, I reached the ground of that hole.
- I fell into a hole - I was outside the hole, and my fall made me enter the hole. That's probably how I'd use it, in a typical situation.
However I'm not a native speaker, and my L1 is rather relaxed when it comes to what prepositions convey. And from a quick websearch, Google lists 3.3M occurrences for "fell in a hole", 2.2M occurrences for "fell into a hole" and 820k for "fell down a hole"; that hints for me that, by default, speakers would use "in a hole" here, unlike I would.
I could say "I fell in a hole" to mean either case (I was in or out of the hole beforehand), but for "I fell into a hole" I would only use it when starting outside the hole. (native speaker)
Like on the one hand it could mean "I fell [while I was] in the hole"
But it could also mean "I fell [and then I was] in the hole"
I am a native speaker, and I do take my word choices very seriously - often to the point of pausing during conversations to find the exact phrasing which will convey the shade of meaning I am looking to convey. I wrote fiction for a while, and it was always extremely important to me to get phrasing right.
I agree with you completely. While I would interpret all of those phrases as equivalent (based on context) if they were to come from someone else, I would tend to use them in exactly the ways you suggest.
Agreed. I feel like the dimensions of the hole is relevant. Like if it has to be wider than it is deep to fall in. But it be needs to be deeper than is wide to fall down into.
And maybe the hole has to be at least wide enough that you can lie horizontally in to fall in it? Not sure about that though. But when falling down a hole, that definitely doesn't matter. The hole has to be deeper that I am tall for me to fall down it, horizontal width doesn't matter, it's all about the vertical in that case.
Similar for me - I think the depth of the hole matters more? It would sound odd to say "I fell down a pothole".
What if said hole had big pointy sharpened sticks at the bottom?
I don't think I'd be saying much then.
If I was walking and stumbled into a hole: "fell in a hole"
If I was climbing in/around the hole intentionally and stumbled: "fell down a hole"
It all depends on how actively involved with the hole I was and if I knew of it's existence.