Good:
Good is a good descriptor for many everyday occurrences: You should soak that in good hot water, or make sure the water is good and hot. Give that a good scrubbing. Make sure that the faucet is turned off good and tight. I’ve even heard, “He’ll be good and tired after working like that.”
But this begs the question: Is there bad hot water? I suppose in pioneer days, there was bad water from a dirty cistern or creek. In modern times, it might be good to leave good out.
Oh, look. I dangled a preposition!
Prepositions:
Churchill, being chided about dangling prepositions, wrote, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” But let me bring up some examples.
We’ll begin with cars. June started the car up. She may warm it up after she starts it up because she let it cool down. But, if we really want to break rules, she could start it right on up. After she warms it up, she might turn the heater right on on, and drive right on down the road—unless of course she drives it up the road. (I’m not sure we are describing the pavement’s incline.)
I wonder why we start a car up but shut it down. Does the car rise when started? (Perhaps a Citroen with leaky suspension?) Let’s not forget to speed up or slow down. The Beach Boys sing, “Tach it up, tach it up/Buddy gonna to shut you down.” (Shut you down is drag racing lingo for winning the race.) Indeed, the song ends with, “Shut it off, shut it off/Buddy now I shut you down”
Some still “put it up on the Internet,” a leftover of bulletin board days. Can you boot a computer over or around? No, because the original term was bootstrap—the initial bit of code that begins to load the operating system. I suppose it must be booted up so it can later be shut down, but in the meantime, when the screen begins to show life, it’s safe to say “it’s coming up.”
Here’s a sentence that uses many useless prepositions: “Young man, you can just march yourself right on over there and turn that light right back on.” That example may be spot on.
I would come up with more examples, but time’s up.
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