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Is it natural to stop with in the following sentence?

We were offered the car in a lot of colors, but We stopped with a red one.

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  • No, it's wrong. You stop at something in a list or something in a row. Not with.
    – Lambie
    Oct 15, 2019 at 15:45

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I do not disagree at all with Mike's answer, and in fact have voted it up, but U.S. speakers, particularly in informal contexts, frequently use ellipsis, meaning that they drop one or more words in the expectation that they will be understood.

We were offered cars in many colors, but we stopped considering colors at red

gets shortened to

We were offered cars in many colors, but we stopped at red

So I agree with Mike that the sentence would be understood in the U.S. with ease, but I do find the preposition "with" a bit odd. "Stop at" is a very common construction; "stop with" is not so common.

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I think any native speaker would understand the intent of this sentence, but I can't say that I've ever heard this used in real life.

I have heard some quite similar constructs, that are visually very similar to your example, such as: "... but we settled for a red one." "... but we ended up with a red one." "...but we stopped looking after we found a red one."

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  • I don't see the point of saying the intent would be understood. I think Dmytro expects more than that in his questions.
    – Lambie
    Oct 15, 2019 at 16:35
  • That part of my answer was actually a direct reply to (and partial rejection of) your comment on the question, where you said that the grammar was 'wrong', and was intended to be informative to any reader, not just to the OP
    – MikeB
    Oct 16, 2019 at 11:36
  • It is pragmatically wrong, not grammatically wrong.
    – Lambie
    Oct 16, 2019 at 14:38

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