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"Wait on" or "Wait for"?

Started by Syt, June 14, 2011, 10:57:49 PM

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Syt

Ok, confused non-native speaker is confused.

When I was in school I was taught that you "wait for" something, as in: "I'm waiting for a friend", "I'll wait for the patch", "I'm waiting for bmolsson to make sense" etc.

"Wait on" is what a waiter does.

Yet, I noticed recently that people would post around the interwebs "I'll wait on a patch".

I'm aware that living languages keep evolving all the time and grammatical constructions or meanings of words can change all the time, but in this case I'm not sure if it's a change in language use or just bad internet grammar (see also: there/their/they're or it's/its).
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DontSayBanana

Quote from: Syt on June 14, 2011, 10:57:49 PM
Ok, confused non-native speaker is confused.

When I was in school I was taught that you "wait for" something, as in: "I'm waiting for a friend", "I'll wait for the patch", "I'm waiting for bmolsson to make sense" etc.

"Wait on" is what a waiter does.

Yet, I noticed recently that people would post around the interwebs "I'll wait on a patch".

I'm aware that living languages keep evolving all the time and grammatical constructions or meanings of words can change all the time, but in this case I'm not sure if it's a change in language use or just bad internet grammar (see also: there/their/they're or it's/its).

Colloquial, certainly.  I'm not sure if it still counts as bad grammar (it works syntactically, but not in context).
Experience bij!

MadImmortalMan

It's used pretty interchangeably.



The one that gets me is waiting "in line" or "on line". Like in a queue.
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The Brain

Native speakers don't know English.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Josquius

People on the internet are stupid.
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Brazen

"Wait on" is an Americanisation and therefore an abominable desecration of the English language.

Admiral Yi

To me "wait on" has a slight connotation of impatience that "wait for" does not.

garbon

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on June 14, 2011, 11:22:32 PM
The one that gets me is waiting "in line" or "on line". Like in a queue.

I hate it here. "Next on line." :bleeding:
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KRonn

I'm just waiting on a more definitive description of the differences between "wait for" and "wait on".     ;)

Waiting on seems to have become somewhat synonymous with waiting for. 

Zeus

Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 15, 2011, 07:08:52 AM
To me "wait on" has a slight connotation of impatience that "wait for" does not.

quoted for truth.
To be cunning and vicious is a fairly obvious shortcut to total victory.

Josephus

Quote from: Brazen on June 15, 2011, 06:19:14 AM
"Wait on" is an Americanisation and therefore an abominable desecration of the English language.

"I'm not waiting on a lady...I'm just waiting on a friend."


Written by an Englishman, though.
Civis Romanus Sum<br /><br />"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011

Josephus

My biggest gripe is:

"I should of gone home."

Should of?? :huh:
Civis Romanus Sum<br /><br />"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011

grumbler

Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 15, 2011, 07:08:52 AM
To me "wait on" has a slight connotation of impatience that "wait for" does not.
I believe this is correct.  To "wait on" implies you can't do anything until someone/something else does something, while "wait for" implies that you are doing something in the meantime.

"I'll get some food while we wait for the next bus."

"I had to wait on the bus for what seemed like an hour."
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

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grumbler

Quote from: Josephus on June 15, 2011, 08:43:40 AM
My biggest gripe is:

"I should of gone home."

Should of?? :huh:
That's your biggest gripe? :huh:

"Of" for "have" is a mere colloquialism.  No one deliberately uses it in writing except when transliterating speech.  There are thousands of word substitutions like that, and always have been; "Ax" for "ask," and the like (probably more in Britain than the US).  I certainly don't see any utility to griping about it.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!