Timeline for "Against traffic" or "Against the traffic"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Sep 1, 2017 at 22:15 | comment | added | CogitoErgoCogitoSum | I dont think the grammatical use of "the" is up for debate. Both sentences are horribly awkward. To me, going against (the) traffic implies you are going the wrong direction in a lane of traffic. But I have heard it used to mean going in the direction that is freest/fastest, wherein the opposite direction is where the bulk of congestion is. | |
| Feb 17, 2012 at 0:48 | comment | added | ruakh | @FumbleFingers: Re: US/UK difference: You may well be right. I can remember several times that I've encountered some unfamiliar usage in a British source, and thought to myself, "Weird, I've never heard that before! Must be a U.K. thing . . .", only to start encountering it in everyday conversations, the local newspaper, etc., and realize that it must have been there all along without my noticing. | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 16:02 | history | edited | Alenanno | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 10 characters in body
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| Feb 16, 2012 at 15:35 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | ...rightly or wrongly, I decided it was probably more of a "linguistics" question, so I've asked the experts over there for an opinion. | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 15:01 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @@ruakh: I wouldn't want to say there isn't a significant difference between US/UK usage in this respect, but I respectfully suggest this doesn't seem particularly likely to me. I'll try to think of a more general case that can be set out and either attract the attention of one of our contributors specialising in comparative linguistics, or just give us a feel for things by way of voting trends. Of course, things may be skewed if we have on average more "analytical" users from one side of the pond or the other, even after we've allowed for there being more Americans in the first place. | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 14:26 | comment | added | ruakh | @FumbleFingers: To be sure, I don't think that "driving against the traffic" is invalid; it's just that I don't think U.S. English draws the distinction you drew in your initial comment, and personally, I would say "driving against traffic" for both situations that you describe. (Or "driving against the flow of traffic", which does have a the, but again, not with the distinction you draw.) | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 13:40 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @ruakh: oic. Well, actually, I don't really. IGI Global seem to be basically American, in that their HQ is at 701 East Chocolate Avenue, Hershey, PA (great address! :). And they have driving mistakes (driving against the traffic) in this report. Both forms seem to be valid in the US as well as the UK. | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 9:02 | answer | added | Anil Soman | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 3:52 | comment | added | ruakh | @FumbleFingers: (To be clear, your last comment is based on a misunderstanding of my now-deleted comment.) | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 3:51 | comment | added | ruakh | @FumbleFingers: I disagree; I would have used "driving against traffic", not "driving against the traffic", in the BBC example. To me the BBC example, as worded, sounds like "driving against {the traffic towards London}", but it's actually "driving {against the traffic} {towards London}". (I imagine this is a U.S./U.K. difference. I'm American.) | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 3:49 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I will simply cite the American Automobile Association's riding the wrong way against traffic to show that not all Americans are so wedded to use of the article in all contexts. | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 3:30 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Both versions are grammatical. Because the second one is specific (we have an actual van facing oncoming traffic), the article would normally be present - it's not just any traffic, it's the traffic going that way down the M4. In the first one it really could be any traffic, because it's a general statement - in such constructions it's not uncommon to omit the article because no particular traffic is being singled out for reference. | |
| Feb 16, 2012 at 3:17 | history | asked | simplebeing | CC BY-SA 3.0 |