Is "fill something in/into something" grammatically correct?

Question

My old Japanese-English dictionary (Random House, published on 1993) provides example sentences of the verb "fill" as follows:

• fill sand into a pail [=fill a pail with sand] バケツに砂を入れる

• fill wine into bottles ぶどう酒を瓶に詰める.

I can't find this usage on some famous online English dictionaries such as Longman and Collins. Is this usage of "fill" correct?

Answer 1

I (a native AmE speaker) do not recognize this usage and would not call it idiomatic.

We say someone fills a vessel [direct object] with a substance [indirect object]: Fill a pail with sand. We can also make it passive, or change the subject of the sentence while keeping the meaning:

• The pail is filled with sand.
• Sand fills the pail.

If you want to keep the substance as the direct object and the vessel as the indirect object, we use the verb pour instead: Pour wine into bottles. Unlike with "fill," "pour" only works one way:

• [x] The bottles are poured with wine.
• [✓] Wine is poured into the bottles.

"Pour" is used for things that can flow; wine is a liquid and can flow, and grains of sand, in the aggregate, can also exhibit fluid-like properties (it is perfectly fine to "pour sand into a pail"). For objects which do not flow, we must use another verb, like pack:

• The suitcase is packed with clothes.
• Clothes are packed into the suitcase.