9

Is it wrong to say:

Happiness awaits for you?

Is it totally wrong to put ‘for’ after awaits ?

Improve this question

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
17

Await has both transitive and intransitive uses; I believe most of the other answers are focused on the transitive usage, reading the sentence as [Happiness] [awaits for] [you], which is indeed non-idiomatic. You can wait for something or someone, or await something or someone, but you would not await for it.

Happiness awaits for you is entirely grammatical when parsed as [Happiness awaits] [for you], however. This parsing would be more clear if awaits were followed by a comma, or inverted as For you happiness awaits. The prepositional phrase for you indicates the party affected by the awaiting, rather than the target of the awaiting.

Consider these examples:

A balcony awaits for dining alfresco. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

The balcony is not waiting for alfresco dining, it is lying in store, or being availablet for alfresco dining.

A move to Europe awaits for the hard working dead-ball specialist… [Sydney Morning Herald]

The activity of moving to Europe, again, is not literally waiting for the player (Brandon O'Neill). Rather, the author is noting that the prospect of a move exists, and secondarily that it affects this player.

That said, I don't think the phrasing awaits for is particularly common, perhaps to avoid confusion with the transitive usage, or the appearance that the author or publication has made an error.

Improve this answer
2
  • "to avoid ... the appearance .. an error": I had to read the Sydney Morning Herald example twice in order to convince myself it was correct.
    – Martin Bonner supports Monica
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 12:02
  • Wow.. thank you! I have to read it a couple of times more to fully understand, though! :D
    – Sdilly
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 22:54
9

... awaits you

or

... waits for you

not ... awaits for you

Improve this answer
3
  • 3
    Exactly - You can think of the "a-" in "awaits" as meaning "for"
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 13:51
  • 1
    This is the same construction as, say, Adventure awaits for the whole family, or would you also object to that sentence on grammatical grounds?
    – choster
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 18:08
  • @choster - Interesting question. It's making me rethink. Your answer looks good.
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 19:38
4

Await, by itself, means wait for. Thus, awaiting means waiting for; for example, "a whole new life was awaiting him in the new job" will be reframed as "a whole new life was waiting for him in the new job".

Other examples:
1. The cat awaits the mouse to come out of the hole.
2. We've been awaiting over an hour now.
3. Happiness awaits you.

Improve this answer
6
  • 9
    We're awaiting over an hour now would not be idiomatic in American English, at least. The time window would recommend something like we've been waiting over an hour now. The intransitive awaiting is further unusual; we're still awaiting news is acceptable, if a little formal for ordinary conversation, but we're still awaiting is much less preferable to we're still waiting.
    – choster
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 18:06
  • 17
    The first paragraph of this answer is correct. The second paragraph, not so much. Only example 3 sounds even remotely idiomatic.
    – Martha
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 18:18
  • 6
    (1) is wrong because one awaits a noun. You could write "The cat awaits the mouse coming out of its hole", which is technically correct but still a bit weird. (2) might sound right to you if you think you can replace "waiting for" with "awaiting" ignoring context, but you can't: here the "for" is a duration, but "awaiting" only works if it indicates the thing for which you wait. Even if you could, "We're waiting for over an hour now" is still in the wrong tense: more reasonable would be "We've been waiting for over an hour now".
    – amalloy
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 20:07
  • 2
    I (and I think most English speakers) would use "wait" for the intransitive situation in #2. Since there's nothing specifically being waited for, it makes no sense to use "await" without an object.
    – Lee Daniel Crocker
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 23:04
  • 2
    @Lee: Yes - it is not idiomatic standard English - also one would be far more likely to say "we've been waiting (duration)". #1 is also gramatically wrong to me - I could possibly accept "...awaits the mouse coming out...", but not with "...to come out...".
    – psmears
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 7:28
3

Yes, it's ungrammatical to say:

Happiness awaits for you.

The verb await in the sentence is a transitive verb that is followed by a direct object; you don't use the preposition "for". So it's correct to say:

Happiness awaits you.

Instead of the await, you can use the intransitive verb wait, usually as (be) -ing form, followed by the preposition "for" as follows:

Happainess waits for you/Hapiness is waiting for you.

Improve this answer
2
  • Await has both transitive and intransitive uses in both British and American usage.
    – choster
    Commented Nov 29, 2018 at 18:11
  • I agree, but it's chiefly used as a transitive verb.
    – Khan
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 2:11

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .