Wine and dine or Wine and dine with?

  Wine and dine or Wine and dine with? 

• To celebrate her birthday, my wife and I decided to wine and dine with friends and family. 


The idiom ‘wine and dine’ means to entertain people by getting them food and drinks. When using the idiom, we should take note that it  takes  direct object without a preposition. When corrected, the above sentence will be :

• To celebrate her birthday, my wife and I decided to wine and dine  friends and family. 

• We are going to wine and dine. 

However, when 'dine' is used, it becomes an intransitive verb. A verb in this category doesn’t take an object without a preposition before the noun. For example, it will be wrong to say ‘He slept the mat' when actually we are to say ‘He slept on the mat'. 

• He dined his parents.  ( non-standard)

• He dined with his parents.  (standard)

• He dined rice and chicken. ( non-standard)

• He dined on rice and chicken. (standard) This sentence means : He ate rice and chicken for dinner. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AT THE OUTSKIRTS or ON THE OUTSKIRTS?

 • We live at the outskirts of Lagos.  The noun ‘outskirts’ ( the parts of a city or town that are furthest from the centre) takes the preposition ‘on'. So when rewritten, we have :  • We live on the outskirts of Lagos. Below are some examples of words that also take the preposition ‘on' : on the premises, on the team, on the panel, on the committee, on a whim, etc. 
Read more

'Charge for' or 'Charge with'?

 • The old man was charged for stealing a phone.  When the verb charge is used to mean ‘to accuse somebody formally of a crime…’’, then it takes the preposition with. Meanwhile, when charge means ‘to ask an amount of money for goods or a service’’, then the preposition to use is for.  E.g. The grocer charged five hundred naira for a bag of beans.  To say it right, the above sentence will be:  The old man was charged with stealing a phone. 
Read more

BILLIARDS ARE or BIILIARDS IS?

 • I enjoy playing billiards, especially because they are played between two players.  The noun ‘billiards' is a singular non-count noun. It should be noted that the ‘s' in it is only part of its spelling. Therefore,  it should be treated as a singular noun. The adjective of ‘billiards’ is billiard: a billiard table, a billiard stick, etc. Examples of nouns in this category include checkers, fives, draughts, etc. When corrected, we have:  • I enjoy playing billiards, especially because it is played between two players. 
Read more