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The verb arrive means to reach a place at the end of a journey. Since it focuses on the end of the motion, not the whole motion from beginning to end, it doesn't work with "to [a destination]" as a mo …

Most common prepositions in English are best understood as elements of phrases, where the phrase as a whole has the meaning, not the preposition by itself independently of a phrase. … This might make learning English prepositions seem hopeless. I do think that English prepositions are even more complicated than English spelling. …

Both "at the park" and "in the park" are correct English, but they mean slightly different things. At the park treats the park simply as a location without regard to being inside it or outside it. I …

Strictly speaking, the sentence is incorrect because listening of playlists is ungrammatical (unless the playlists are doing the listening). Since categorization takes of and editing takes of but list …

But don't think that these prepositions mean the same thing in every context. … Often with English prepositions, you need to understand the phrase as carrying an important part of the meaning, which can't be inferred from the words and grammatical rules alone. …

Native speakers have been arguing about this for centuries. There are two schools of thought. The conjunction theory The conjunction theory, most famously advocated by Robert Lowth (1710–1787), clai …

Native speakers learn English prepositions from context and by actually communicating. This gives them a few important advantages over someone trying to learn prepositions from dictionaries. … Prepositions in phrasal verbs The biggest advantage of learning prepositions from context is that you don't expect them to have a meaning out of context. …

By itself, conjure means to cause something to appear by magic (literally), especially by a magic incantation. For example, "Faustus conjured a demon." Conjure up can mean the same thing, but more of …

Welcome to the confusing world of English prepositions. English prepositions sometimes have very little definite meaning by themselves. … This all means that in order to learn English, you can't simply remember the meanings of individual prepositions. You have to learn entire phrases. …

In that context, "upon" means: just after or as something happened. You could reword the sentence as follows: On February 1st, 2003, the seven crew members of the Space Shuttle Columbia perished when …

Your intuition is right. The customary preposition there is “at”: I am learning the ropes at my new job. This search on Google Books brings up 2,700 results. The reason for “at” is to indicate a loc …

In general, how objects get divided among prepositions depends on how familiar phrases, prior knowledge, and common sense influence how a listener “chunks” the sentence. …

To by doesn't actually mean anything. At least, a native speaker doesn’t hear it as one thing. Here's another way to write your example sentence, which might explain what’s going on: The main loo …

Those are a little less fitting, because the core meanings of these prepositions (with "make") are as above. … The core meaning of any word can be stretched, and the core meanings of prepositions in English often stretch a great deal. …

Both are correct, and the difference in meaning is subtle but important. Each has more than one reasonable grammatical interpretation. I'll illustrate each interpretation with a made-up anecdote along …