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The Creeping Overuse of "Up"
Autor: amichalski :: Views: 202 ::
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Excessive prepositions aren't uncommon among us English speakers--in fact, English is among the few languages whose speakers find it absolutely necessary to use prepositions at all--but every so often, a prepositional usage will appear that stands out as odd. Our tendency to attach "up" to verbs that don't need it is one of these instances.
Sometimes up makes a real difference in how a verb functions or what it means. Consider this: Jeanne might get up in the morning then run to 7-11 to get a newspaper. The difference between their meanings, "rise" versus "acquire," is clear. This is true for other verbs as well: Tom will make an effort to arrive at work early and make up lost time; when we work demanding jobs, we work up an appetite; it would take a lot of nerve to take up skydiving. Obviously dropping the preposition would be a bad idea in these cases.
But it seems lately that people meet up and switch up instead of just meeting or switching. We've become more likely to call up a friend on the phone. And we continue as in generations past to wash up, then eat up, drink up, and finish up dessert as well. This tendency to add a meaningless preposition is curious.
An interviewee on the news recently, the owner of a local shop, said he started stocking a particular new product because every once in a while, it's good to "change up" his merchandise. His word choice, not the product, caught my attention. Here was an example of an up that was more than extraneous; it was wrong. Unless he was talking baseball, the man had surely meant "change," not "change up." His extra "up" had gotten him hung up.
Time will tell whether this odd usage becomes even more rooted. For now, though, I wonder: am I the only one who finds it clunky to clutter up sentences with unnecessary prepositions?
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