| 词组 | to |
| 释义 | to 1. The use of to in place of at has occasionally been cited as an error by American commentators since Ayres 1881. The issue primarily involves the use of to following a form of the verb to be, as in "She was to church yesterday." Such usage occurs only in nonstandard idiom when the verb is in the past tense, was or were. • We was to the breakfast-table a talkin' it over — Marietta Holley, "A Pleasure Exertion," in Mark Twain's Library of Humor, 1888 Ayres also considered to erroneous following the present perfect tense of to be, "She has been to church." Such usage is now recognized as standard, however, and is actually quite distinct from the "was to church" construction. The verb be in "She has been to church" is almost synonymous with go, although its connotations are somewhat different: "She has gone to church" may mean that she is still there, but "She has been to church" strongly suggests that she is there no longer. The essential point, in any case, is that to does not mean "at" when it follows has been, have been, or had been, and it is not at all erroneous: • I have been to the mountaintop —Martin Luther King, speech, 1968 2. It is unlikely that anyone reading this book needs help in distinguishing to, too, and two, but these words are often inadvertently misspelled, and you may want to keep an especially sharp eye out for possible errors when you proofread your own (or anyone else's) writing. Mistakes can be embarrassing: • The Needlenose tape shows the wreckage of that one two —Pleasure Boating, February 1984 |
| 随便看 |
英语用法大全包含2888条英语用法指南，基本涵盖了全部常用英文词汇及语法点的翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。