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Someone asked me

What if someone hides their instagram stories from you?

I replied

I'd hide them from my life.

Is my sentence right

Does hide mean to make disappear?

If not What else could I have used here?

Someone told me the object of preposition "from" is a person who is not supposed to see or find that which is hidden

So what about this sentence?

the magician hid(made her disappear) from the stage?

Is it wrong?

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  • Is your "life" something you don't want the person to have access to? If so, you would hide your life from the person; you would not hide the person from your life. Is "life" something like a "timeline"?
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 15:06
  • What would hiding the person from life mean?
    – user64287
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 15:10
  • If a magician makes a rabbit "disappear", we know that rabbit still exists even though we can't see it (no-one would want to watch a magician doing that trick if they knew his method involved vaporising the poor animal). But that's a slightly quirky context - unless we're talking about supernatural events, usually if something disappears, it ceases to exist. You might reasonably (if somewhat optimistically) say your goal in life is to make world hunger disappear (cease to exist), but it wouldn't be nice to say your goal is to hide world hunger (it would still be present, just not seen).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 17:38
  • Please don't ask the same question multiple times. I've merged the other copy of the question into this one.
    – user230
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 19:45

5 Answers 5

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To hide something does not mean to make it disappear.

To hide something means to conceal it so that it cannot be seen.

The heiress wanted to hide her jewels from the thieves.

Notice that the object of preposition from is the person who is not supposed to see or find that which is hidden.

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  • No, @user236989. "Made her disappear from the stage" is OK, but only if "disappear" means "leave". "Hid her from the stage" is incoherent.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 15:31
  • Object of preposition from can not be a place like the magician hid(made her disappear) from the stage?
    – user64287
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 15:43
  • As I said, hide does not mean "make someone disappear". The magician hid his assistant under the stage when he seemed to make her disappear from the stage.
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:54
  • @Colin Does She hid her from the stage [all her life], e.g., cohere for you?
    – green_ideas
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 17:01
  • @Clare: that's using stage as a profession, not a place. She did not let the denizens of the stage, or the allure of the stage, get at her, in the same way that the heiress doesn't want the thieves to get at her jewels.
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 17:51
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I think your response is comprehensible as a joke, as long as it's delivered using the right intonation, body language, or emoji. You don't "hide" someone unless you're concealing a fugitive, but as a nonstandard, poetic, jokey usage, this works for me.

A common expression in English that I think captures what you're trying to say is, "They're dead to me." It's often used hyperbolically.

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  • Or, alternatively, "I'd cut them out of my life."
    – Chemomechanics
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:58
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Normally, you "hide something [from someone/something else]." You would not, for example "hide the assistant from the stage" but instead you'd say:

The magician hid the assistant [from the audience].

Your other example, to "hide [something] from my life" does not make sense either. "To hide" does not mean "to remove" or "to erase," but instead means "to cover" or "to conceal."

You could, then, flip the sentence you suggested around:

I'd hide my life from them.

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You should have said

I'd hide my life from them.

The advice you had was correct. The complement of the preposition "from" is the person or people that are unable to see the hidden object.

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  • The magician hid her from the stage is not correct?
    – user64365
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 17:42
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Assuming you meant that, if those people hide their stories from you, you would not want them to be a part of your life, then your sentence is actually correct and fairly clever. While "hide" not really the right verb to use in this context, the point is to reuse the same verb and the same overall structure.

This kind of humor is common in English. For example, this is something my father might have said to me when I was a kid:

Me. Ow! That tree branch poked me!
Dad. Well, then poke it back.

Obviously poking the branch in the same way it poked me isn't going to do any good, but the point of the joke was to make me laugh at the absurdity and take my mind off of any pain.

As others have pointed out, "to hide" something does not mean to make it "disappear". Instead it means to conceal or cover it, or in some way make it so it can't be seen. So the phrase

I'd hide them from my life

would be interpreted as

I would make it so I could not see them.

meaning

I wouldn't want them to be my friends any more.

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  • Btw the magician hid(made her disappear) her from the stage is not correct?
    – user64365
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 18:10
  • Hiding something is not magic. Anyone can hide an object. It's magic to make it appear to vanish completely (even if the magician is really only hiding it in some way)
    – Andrew
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 19:38

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