To walk down

Question

Hello !Could you please tell me the meaning of the underlined words in the sentence below ?"After there's about a foot of snow on the front door . It was too heavy to clean it out." And what is the idea of "walk down" ? e.g. Let's walk down to the butcher shop to buy some meat and sausages for dinner.   Thanks in advance,Bertrand

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

Could you please tell me the meaning of the underlined words in the sentence below ?

"After there's about a foot of snow on the front door . It was too heavy to clean it out."

Part 1 is not a proper sentence. The 'after' makes it only a subordinate clause. We don't really know if it relates to the following sentence, or to whatever preceded it.

Also, part 1 uses present tense and part 2 uses past tense, which is confusing. Finally, we don't usually speak of 'cleaning out' snow. Were these two sentences above written by a native speaker?

A 'foot' is 12 inches. Compare that to a metre, which is roughly 40 inches.

And what is the idea of "walk down" ? e.g. Let's walk down to the butcher shop to buy some meat and sausages for dinner.

Adding 'down' to 'walk' like this suggests that the destination is well-known to the speaker and not far away.

Best wishes, Clive

Khoff · Answer

Another thing that makes the quotation awkward is that we don't usually talk about snow "on the door" -- you might say there was a foot of snow "on the porch," or "blocking the door," or "piled up against the door," but since a door is a vertical surface it would be unlikely to have a foot of snow "on" it.

"A foot of snow," by the way, means snow that is a foot (12 inches; or about 30 cm.) deep.

Anonymous · Answer

Hi, Clive

According to your explanations I'm almost sure that sentence wasn't written by a native speaker .

Thanks for the help,

Bertrand.

Anonymous · Answer

Hi, Khoff !

Thanks for your help.

Best wishes,

Bertrand

To walk down

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