"in love at first sight with"

[James Smith]

"She fell in love with at first sight Aaron Spelling."
sounds not only unintuitive but very, very strange,
convoluted, and confusing.  "Aaron Spelling, she fell
in love with at first sight." is tolerable.

Separating the object from the preposition is what
sounds unintuitive, bizarre.

"She fell in 'love at first sight' with Aaron
Spelling" is only slightly better.

How about "She fell in love with Aaron Spelling at
first sight", or "At first sight, she fell in love
with Aaron Spelling."?




--- Nathan Bierma <nbierm65 at CALVIN.EDU> wrote:

> On the Emmy's last night when one of the original
> Charlie's Angels described
> Aaron Spelling as someone she fell "in love at first
> sight with," it sounded
> unusual to me to place the "with" after "at first
> sight." (I'm no persecutor of
> preposition stranders; it just sounded like an
> unusual placement.)
>
> A quick and dirty investigation (Googling), however,
> yields:
>
>  about 35,800 for "in love at first sight with"
>
>  about 896 for "in love with at first sight"
>
>
> So I guess it's Charlie's Angels 1, My Intuitions, 0
> -- but does that sound
> less intuitive to anyone else?
>
> Nathan Bierma
> "On Language"
> Chicago Tribune
> www.nbierma.com/language
>
>
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> The American Dialect Society -
> http://www.americandialect.org
>


James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org