Duggy wrote:
> On Feb 9, 5:53 pm, GG <nos...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>> "the dirt beneath his feet"
>> seems much more frequent than
>> "the dirt below his feet"
>> Any reasons?
> Below is any dirt lower than him.
> Beneath is the dirt he's standing on.
GG wrote:
> Duggy wrote:
>> On Feb 9, 5:53 pm, GG <nos...@nowhere.com> wrote:
>>> "the dirt beneath his feet"
>>> seems much more frequent than
>>> "the dirt below his feet"
>>> Any reasons?
>> Below is any dirt lower than him.
>> Beneath is the dirt he's standing on.
> I see.
> Thanks, everybody.
There are lots of possible combinations for:
the {dirt, earth, soil, ground...} {below, beneath, under..} his feet
Have you compared them all?
I am afraid I don't understand the purpose of your popularity contest? Is it supposed to prove that one is any more "correct" than another?
Each of them might have their own shade of meaning appropriate to a given context, hence my earlier comment.
-- Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au
On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:53:21 -0500, GG wrote:
> "the dirt beneath his feet"
> seems much more frequent than
> "the dirt below his feet"
> Any reasons?
Despite some fancy parsing on this thread, in simple fact the words are virtual synonyms. "Beneath" is idiomatic; that is a sufficient answer in itself (considering what "idiom" is)--but it probably derives from the point that "beneath" also has the related connotation of covering in close contact ("the ground beneath the snow", "the huddled form beneath the blanket"), and so implies contact between the covering (feet") and what is covered.
