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Fatimah0786 Posted 12 years ago
Grammar
Tug at and get at
What is the meaning of 'at' in the following sentences:1. "She comes over and starts tugging at the strings of the carrier. 2."The woman behind is trying to get at the pen".
Top answer
com/us/definition/american_english/at#at may be relevant here: Emphasizing the directing of an action toward a specified object However, native speakers (speaking personally, anyway) tend to treat many such verb + preposition combinations as idiomatic; so they just "know" that a preposition such as "at" goes with a particular verb to create a particular meaning, rather than consciously being aware of the individual meaning of the preposition. In this case I would say that "get at" is fully idiomatic, while "tug at" is partially so.
- com/us/definition/american_english/at#at may be relevant here: Emphasizing the directing of an action toward a specified object However, native speakers (speaking personally, anyway) tend to treat many such verb + preposition combinations as idiomatic; so they just "know" that a preposition such as "at" goes with a particular verb to create a particular meaning, rather than consciously being aware of the individual meaning of the preposition.
- In this case I would say that "get at" is fully idiomatic, while "tug at" is partially so.
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1 Answers
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A quick scan through some dictionary definitions suggests sense 5.2 at http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/at#at may be relevant here:
Emphasizing the directing of an action toward a specified object
However, native speakers (spea
Emphasizing the directing of an action toward a specified object
However, native speakers (spea
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