There are marriages made in heaven, marriages made in haste, and marriages that survive solely because neither party remembers how they got together. English verbs and prepositions belong firmly in the third category. Nobody knows why we depend on someone but believe in them, why we apologise for a mistake but confide in a friend or why we consist of parts but belong to a group. Somewhere in the language’s long and untidy history, these pairings were arranged, and they have been living together ever since.Lately, though, humans seem determined to play matchmakers. A politician no longer cozies up to an industrialist; he’s cozying up with one. Govts invest on infrastructure, instead of in. Officials discuss about policy. Someone is married with two children, as though matrimony were a joint venture. Verbs are being introduced to new prepositions without a formal separation from old ones. Casualties are the little words. Nobody notices them when they’re right, the way nobody notices a good referee. Their finest achievement is going unnoticed. Swap one out, though, and the sentence starts to squeak.Languages evolve, of course. Shakespeare coined words freely. American English gave us expressions that scandalised British purists. Indian English has added its own rhythms and idioms. Evolution is not the enemy, confusion is. Most verb-preposition pairings follow convention, not logic, which is why they resist improvisation. You adhere to rules, not with them. You refrain from commenting, not to. You dispose of waste, object to a proposal, long for a holiday, approve of an idea. Try justifying any of this to someone learning English, and the language starts to resemble a cat: certain it is right, uninterested in explaining why.Perhaps that’s what makes these pairings so fragile. A wrong phrase surfaces often enough, in a TV debate, a slide deck, an overeager AI’s prose, and it starts to sound almost right. Familiarity is not the same as correctness, but it is a convincing impostor. So we need to spend our days rescuing respectable verbs from unsuitable companions – more like a relationship counsellor than a grammar nazi. Yes, English has outlasted invasions, colonialism, texting, and autocorrect, and will outlast this too, but a few marriages are worth defending. After all, if Romeo belongs with Juliet, we can surely agree that one should cozy up to someone, not with them. Some matches are simply meant to be.
Disclaimer: Views expressed above are the author’s own.