What is the obsession with prepositions in our language? I remember, when I went to Italy for that year, being astounded that there was an entirely different verb for every get-plus-preposition we use in English. Think about it:
- get in (a car)
- get in (a college)
- get out (of a car)
- get out (“Get OUT! I don’t believe it!”)
- get up (from bed)
- get up (…you know)
- get down (off a ladder)
- get down (boogie)
- get at (an internal organ during surgery)
- get at (“What are you getting at?”)
- get to (a destination)
- get to (“She really gets to me.”)
- get on (a plane, a train)
- get on (one’s last nerve)
- get off (a train)
- get off (…what one might do after one gets up)
- get over (a wall)
- get over (“I’ll never get over him.”)
- get across (a river)
- get across (your point)
- get behind (a blast shield)
- get behind (a cause)
- get between (two parked cars)
- get between (“I don’t want my hatred of your mother to get between us.”)
- get by (a person in a grocery aisle)
- get by (survive on little money)
- get through (a tunnel)
- get through (a tough time)
- get around (“Here we get around by Vespa.”)
- get around (“That Amy…she gets around.”)
Got more?
You forgot “Get up offa that thang (dance till you feel better…)”
you get around, amy?
hmmm.
IT WAS AN EXAMPLE, MARGO.
uh, huh.
no need to shout, dear.
People from Pennsylvania (I’m one) say they’re going to “get a bath.”
— But what the hell, we all PUNCTUATE wrong(ly), as I just did with the quotation mark after the period after the word “bath.” Whoops, there I go again; but think about it — the thought of the whole sentence ends after the quoted word, right? Used to be, only Americans did it the wrong way. Then we bombed our way out of WW2, and everybody started punctuating wrong, so they’d seem right. Figure. The English do the quotation thing right, but mangle the rest of their own language. But anyway, I always try to punctuate quotations the American wrong way in short stories I send in to lit journals so the editors don’t perceive that I’m ignorant. Hey, that happens, and it’s a bitch.