usage with "drink"

Hi,

Both are OK.

1) He drank himself into debts. This is a rather graphic way to say it.

2) Drinking has run him into debt. This is OK, although possibly rather old-fashioned. It also is slightly possible that it wasn't his drinking, but his wife's, that was the trouble. So, you might say

Hello

I learned through Google that it is very rare that any objective noun other than "death" and "grave" is used in the fake reflexive construct "drink oneself to ~".

By the way I personally like the idiomatic saying "He drank the pub dry".

paco

How about "sleep"?

"debt" singular, not plural, is what I'd say.

He drank himself into debt.
Drinking has run him into debt.

I find the first more idiomatic.

Hello W3.com

Yeah we come across "drink oneself to sleep" frequently. But is this "sleep" a noun or an infinitive?

paco

Noun. The "to" is like "into". But in "to drink to sleep" (no 'oneself'), it's an infinitive (of purpose).
Don't you think so?

CJ

Hello CJ

Thank you for the quick response. OK I understand that "sleep" is a noun. By the way would you feel any semantic difference between "He drank himself to sleep" and "He drank to sleep"? If there is any, could you tell us it?

paco

I feel a big difference.
If he drank himself to sleep, he drank and drank and drank until he could no longer remain awake and he fell asleep, even though his original purpose was not necessarily to cause himself to fall asleep.
If he drank to sleep, he drank in order to cause himself to fall asleep; he drank for the purpose of falling asleep. He may not have needed to drink very

Hello CJ

Thank you for the answer. So you use the infinitival "to sleep" only as a purpose-adverbial, and not use as a resultative adverbial of "drank". Very interesting. I learned a new thing. Thank you again.

paco