"for" = of

[Benjamin Barrett]

I'm confused about the issue of "true for" here.

Isn't this just ordinary English, as in this example:

That's true for all people.

If you substitute "cases" for "people," then "in" works as well, but
what else would you say here?

Aloha from Maui
Benjamin Barrett

On Dec 10, 2009, at 1:26 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

>
> Then something screwy is happening in the distribution of "for."
>
> Not even a mathematician would write, "What is the capitol for
> Kuwait?"
> JL
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>> Dipping almost randomly into early-20th-century mathematical and
>> philosophical journals, I find an abundance of such phrasing as
>> "true for
>> all values of the variable."
>>
>> --Charlie
>>
>>
>> ---- Original message ----
>>> Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:24:32 -0500
>>> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on
>>> behalf of
>> Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>)
>>> Subject: Re: "for" = of
>>>
>>> I still think it sounds weird.  To (or even "for") me, to "be
>>> true for"
>> means solely "be true in the opinion of," as in New Age-
>> Deconstructonist
>> contexts like, "The Law of Gravity may be true for you, but it
>> isn't true
>> for me."
>>>
>>> http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_capitol_for_Kuwait  asks,
>>> "What is
>> the capitol [sic] for Kuwait?"
>>>
>>> JL
>>>
>>>

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